


something missing

by searwrites (sears)



Series: 3 men and a baby au [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Breaking Up & Making Up, Kidfic, M/M, Modern AU, Multi, Polyamory, See notes for warnings, alternating pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 15:56:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4185885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sears/pseuds/searwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The man’s back is to Armin, sitting on a stool wearing a ratty old parka and sweatpants, looking every inch the exhausted father, what with the pistol he apparently has for a daughter. He turns, catches a look at Armin, and then does a double take.</p><p>Armin, on the other hand, stands frozen to the ground, probably blocking an angry horde of commuters from their vital morning brews, while a knowing, horrible recognition makes his blood turn to ice in his veins.</p><p>It’s Jean.</p><p>Jean, here in the bagel shop. Jean, with a tiny little girl with dark brown hair and a sharp, well-defined nose— Jean’s nose. <i>Fuck</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something missing

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings: sexual content, mentions past recreational drug use, single parenting, themes of child abandonment, slight mention of imbalance in poly affections, +potentially more i may remember and tack on later.
> 
> if the first third of this seems familiar it's because i posted this as a chaptered thing a long time ago and then chickened out and took it down unfinished. this is as "finished" as it's going to get, though i am adding it to a series in case i ever feel like adding the additional 18k i hacked off to make this more palatable (i tried lol). 
> 
> (also, i do still have a [tumblr](http://searsraes.tumblr.com/), it's just different and not writing oriented!)

It’s a bitter sort of chill that Armin trudges through, one that really isn’t all that unfamiliar considering he only moved to Stohess and not somewhere with a more foreign climate. Still, the suburbs outside of Shiganshina aren’t much to write home about - or they would be if they weren’t already home.

Armin doesn’t usually come home for extended holiday visits, but this particular time is more a necessity than familial duty— his family was never all that big on thanksgiving anyway. But it is nearly the winter after all, and Armin rather likes having somewhere warm to sleep at night, having lost the lease on his latest apartment with such adept timing.

But it’s okay, because his grandfather is old and practically senile, and he hardly remembers Armin has been gone for so long. Calling him senile seems cruel and cold hearted, but then Armin takes a look at the written instructions he holds in his hand– on what exactly to pick up for his grandfather from the cafe– and how he wrote down his preferred choice of bagel _twice_ , and feels a little justified in the thought.

It’s cold and wet and miserable, and the cafe windows are steamed and warm looking, the peeling paint on the edges of the building only make it seem all the more familiar and inviting. It’s a glaring distraction from the fact that the cafe is exceptionally packed on the inside, the line from the counter snaking all the way back towards the tables and booths. He’s under strict (or perhaps just insistent) orders from his grandfather - cinnamon raisin bagel(just one, not two), no cream cheese, black dark roast. This cafe has been open for as long as he can remember, but he doesn’t ever remember it being this busy. Maybe that’s what he gets for jumping on the old man’s sleep schedule, perhaps most coffee houses are usually jammed full at 7:30am.

The way the line snakes is awkward, and they really should install one of those retractable guides made out of the same material as seatbelts, because Armin nearly bumps into an older looking woman, smiling apologetically when she scowls on the assumption that he’d meant to cut her in line. He’s about to apologize vocally when he catches– and apparently interrupts– the tail end of a very enthusiastic conversation about various colors of Christmas trees.

“Daddy look! Red Christmas tree— and, and green! Daddy, look—  _oh_.”

A tiny, cute little girl, dark hair bunched in messy pigtails that hang uneven beside her cheeks, stops in an almost comically stunned silence when she catches Armin watching her. He smiles faintly at the way she was just eagerly leaning up in her booster seat to point towards the decorations strung from the ceiling, ignoring the small and half eaten pastry on the plastic plate in front of her.

It is a little late to still boast Christmas decorations, Armin will admit. _‘Daddy’_ , it seems, wasn’t really paying attention to her observant rant, but he turns to look at the cause of interruption when it’s apparent something has distracted her.

The man’s back is to Armin, sitting on a stool wearing a ratty old parka and sweatpants, looking every inch the exhausted father, what with the pistol he apparently has for a daughter. He turns, catches a look at Armin, and then does a double take.

Armin, on the other hand, stands frozen to the ground, probably blocking an angry horde of commuters from their vital morning brews, while a knowing, horrible recognition makes his blood turn to ice in his veins.

It’s Jean.

Jean, here in the bagel shop. Jean, with a tiny little girl with dark brown hair and a sharp, well-defined nose— Jean’s nose. _Fuck_.

Armin is about ready to say screw his spot in line and run, ignoring his usual careful avoidance of creating scenes with the way he would have to wade through the accumulation of bodies now behind him, but he can’t, because Jean gasps and says, “Armin?”

“Jean,” Armin says, by way of numb confirmation, the arm not clutching his wallet to his chest falling dead at his side.

Now that he’s allowed himself to look, it’s a crippling sort of recognition. Jean turns and stands from his stool, and he looks older than his age of 24, deep bags beneath his eyes, the color of wet cement and looking just as heavy and burdensome. He’s got stubble lining the edge of his jaw, a loose old Marley tshirt beneath the parka, and he’s a fucking mess but he’s still every bit as gorgeous as Armin had forced himself to stop remembering.

He doesn’t have much time to gawk, though, because Jean surges forward, wraps Armin up in a hug befitting old friends, not scorned and forgotten lovers, unintentionally tugging him away from the line, his spot almost immediately spoken for in his wake. Armin catches Jean’s daughter craning her neck to watch them, the angle awkward with the table they were sitting at against the opposite wall.

His _daughter_. Jean has a child, and god— the warm scent of his neck is so achingly familiar.

Jean seems to gather his wits, pulls back and clears his throat a little awkwardly, returns to stand by the little girl. He leans onto the edge of her booster seat, like just knowing she’s there is grounding him, somehow. Perhaps it is.

“How the heck are you?” Jean asks, his tone winded and wrought with disbelief.

“I’m…” _Terrible, lonely, bored._ “I’m okay, yeah.” Armin doesn’t ask how Jean is, not yet, because he’s not ready to hear that Jean is doing great without him— without _them_. Instead, he gestures towards the little girl and asks, “So, who’s this?”

“Oh,” Jean says, shaking his head like he’d forgotten where he was, and he turns and tugs the girl’s stool until she’s forced to face forward. He then gently grips the back of her neck, possessive yet still fond, in only the way Jean could ever be. His smile is tired and worn, but just about as brilliant as the sun as he looks down at her and says, “This is Mina.”

Armin takes a slow step closer, a part of him still not quite ready to believe that this is happening. The air around them is thick with the scent of coffee and warmth, bustling with that distinct early morning buzz, but Armin feels like he’s locked in a time capsule, stuck and alone in a crowd of people. He’d known it was a risk coming back here, but even Eren managed to get out of this town, albeit only an hour away. Jean, he thought, would’ve been somewhere in the region of another fucking country, not right at the same bagel store they used to stop at sometimes on their way to classes.

“Hi Mina,” Armin says quietly, and then leans down to her level to say, “I’m Armin.”

The child’s eyes go terrifyingly wide, and she seems to slink backwards in fear. Armin pouts a little at the reaction— he’s never thought himself a threatening figure.

“She takes a while to warm to people,” Jean says consolingly, like he picked up on Armin’s discomfort, and he probably did— Jean could always read him, alarmingly well. It hurts to remember, so Armin decides to rip the bandaid from the wound in one fell swoop.

“How’s Hitch?”

Hitch, Jean’s wife, was a shotgun poor decision with an only situationally ironic name, in Armin’s humble opinion. She was a breakneck attempt at covering up a sore spot in Jean’s life— the blanket meant to cover the stain of what they used to be as a whole.

“Um,” Jean begins, scratching the back of his neck, looking rather uncomfortable, “I don’t… really know. I think she’s okay.”

Armin’s eyes flit to little Mina, still silent and tugging on Jean’s parka, hiding behind what she can grab of it, before fixing back on Jean. “What do you mean?”

“We, uh, we got divorced in like, less than a year, so.”

“Oh,” Armin mutters, and numb isn’t the right word to describe this feeling, but it’s close enough. If there’s a word for feeling like the ground has been ripped out from under you, only to then be bashed in the head by the broken tiles of it, then maybe it’s more that than numb.

“Yeah,” Jean says, and he squeezes the back of his daughter’s neck, kneading her small spine like she’s a sort of tiny human stress ball.

He only asks because he thinks he might never get the chance to again. “So, new girlfriend?”

Jean, rather solemnly, shakes his head, “Mina’s momma isn’t around. It’s just me and her.”

“Wow, uh,” Armin stutters, scraping the barrel for words, for something, for anything to say to this. He settles on, “That’s— that’s really great, Jean.”

It isn’t at all, and Armin blushes in embarrassment as soon as he says it. Jean is a single father, tired and worn down in his hometown. He makes a vague sound that says he agrees, even though Armin knows that he doesn’t. There’s nothing great about the broken shards of Jean’s contorted smile.

“So, you home for the holidays?” Armin asks, in an attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere.

Jean laughs a little, though it sounds hollow and not full of any real humor. “More like just… home.”

“Oh?”

“We live with my mom,” Jean clarifies.

“Oh!” Armin says, far too perky to be passed as normal. “That’s perfect, built in babysitter, right?”

Jean smiles, this time a little more genuine, albeit still threaded through exhaustion. “Yeah, well. My mom still works, but yeah. She can cook, at least. Even though Mina pretty much still eats mush— right baby?”

Jean strokes the back of the girl’s hair, and Armin desperately tries to ignore the sharp stab of pain at hearing Jean affectionately using the term ‘baby’ again, after so long. It triggers horribly vivid memories, and Armin isn’t ready to rehash those just yet. The fact they’re missing someone vitally important in this reunion is part of the reason he’s pretending everything’s okay, at least for now.

She really is adorable, but Armin would have never expected otherwise. She's got huge, wide eyes, bright green that’ll probably fade to something closer to Jean’s mossy colored ones as she gets older.

Her pigtails are such a tragic, shabby mess though, and then Armin feels horrible for even thinking it, because Jean probably did her hair by himself.

“So, how’s Eren?” Jean asks, interrupting Armin’s probably lengthy internal assessment of the two generations of Kirstein in front of him, and it’s a low blow, one that reminds him exactly how awful this meeting really is.

“Uh, he’s good, I think. I haven’t talked to him for a little over a month now, so—”

“What?” Jean interrupts, voice almost harsh and angry sounding, his hand finally dropping away from his daughter’s nape. “He didn’t come back with you?”

The disappointment curling Jean’s brows downward makes Armin’s heart clench. Of course Jean would expect Eren to be around, he always thought of Armin and Eren as something separate from himself, sacred and private and above him— or something along those lines.

“No,” Armin replies, deciding to keep to short answers where he can.

“I’m sorry, I just,” Jean begins, and he looks as though he wants to console Armin for something, takes half a step towards him but stops himself before he’s really moved. “I assumed you two would be…” he gestures vaguely at something with his hands, obviously struggling for words.

“No,” Armin says, and Jean’s frowning so hard it makes Mina glance up at him with her own innocent look of concern, so Armin decides he might as well elaborate. “We still talk, just. A lot less, you know?”

Jean’s face is stricken with sadness, but it breaks when Mina makes a small, desperate sound, tugging on his coat and grabbing his attention. He smiles down at her, a quick, impulsive reassurance, and Armin is nearly overcome by a powerful and familiar wave of affection for him.

“You should come over!” Jean practically shouts, startling Armin a little. Armin stifles a laugh, because even Mina manages to jump at the sudden shift in his tone, which makes her entire body shake and then stiffen. _God, she’s adorable,_ Armin thinks. “My mom would be real happy to see you—”

“’Gramma?” Mina interrupts quietly, voicing her correction on Jean’s wording like a question.

“Yes, baby, grandma,” he appeases her, then turns back to Armin. “She asks about you and Eren a lot, actually.”

Armin smiles, despite himself. He’s determined not to go back there, not yet. _There_ being the place where he hated Jean’s mother just after Jean left, for giving Jean a reason to doubt the things he wanted.

“Yeah,” he says, “I could come see your mom sometime.”

Jean touches his shoulder, his fingers trembling halfway through the gesture, like he realized he maybe isn’t allowed to anymore. Armin lets him, though, maybe even exhales in slight relief at the warmth of his palm gripping his bicep just before it slides away.

“I’m really glad I got to see you,” Jean says, voice almost too sincere, enough to make Armin break eye contact, fearing that kind of intimate intensity. “We have to run, I’m already a little late. Please consider coming over, okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” Armin says, trying not to let his frown break through the smile. He glances back up at Jean, and is hit with the sudden urge to cry, so he instead peeks over towards Mina, not at all surprised that her cautiously wary expression really does help his smile turn genuine. “It was nice meeting you too, miss Mina.”

Mina looks appropriately terrified of Armin, and Armin is still a little hurt that he’s apparently so intimidating. But it’s enough of a distraction to allow him to let Jean walk away from him without feeling like he might break apart at the seams.

Armin makes his way through the line in a daze, starting back from square one, forgetting to order something for himself in the process. His grandfather is sitting in his recliner back at home, already halfway back to sleep, so Armin quietly leaves the paper bag and red cup on the side table next to him.

He only lets himself realize how shaken he is when he closes the door to his room behind him, his childhood home a sort of bitter reminder. He pulls out his phone without really thinking about it, does it all on impulse, scrolls through his entire contact list until he gets to the only other person besides himself to ever have slept in this very room.

_‘can i talk to you?’_

Armin waits for five minutes, twiddles his thumbs and stares up at the spaces between the wood in his ceiling, lets his phone rest on his stomach and swears up and down that he won’t jump if it vibrates. He gets impatient, sick of fucking waiting for things to happen, and picks the phone up to text again.

_‘please, it’s important’_

About three and a half seconds later, Eren is calling him.

“Hey, you alright?”

Eren’s voice is clipped and tinny, and Armin sighs heavily. He didn’t realize how much he missed the sound of his voice until right this very second. Or maybe he had and he chose not to think about it— Armin has become a master of compartmentalizing his emotions, or at least he was for a while.

“I’m fine. I think I need to see you, though,” Armin says, his voice firm but shaky around the edges. “I’m in town, or at least in your state.”

“I can meet you somewhere,” Eren says, immediate and sure, no hint of a question in his tone. Armin feels like crying all over again. “Did something happen?”

“Um,” Armin says, his voice pitched high, and he _is_ crying now— he just hopes Eren can’t tell. “Sort of? You’ll never guess who I ran into at the bagel shop today.”

It’s the perfect, most terrible excuse to act needy and weak, and Armin will be damned if he isn’t going to take advantage of it. He thinks the universe at least owes them this much.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Eren didn’t think he’d ever have a reason to come back here.

Not since his mother moved up to Trost after Mikasa flew off to another country for college, not since he’d gotten himself a nice, cozy little artist’s loft downtown, a ten minute walk to the production space he interns at, and only a short drive to his school.

It took him about an hour and a half to get here, only because he rushed through lunchtime traffic, and he hasn’t been down these roads in a while. Armin asked him to meet him at the old diner by the theater, the one that has since been renovated about half a million times, by the look of the lumpy paint on the walls. Armin sits alone in a booth, staring down at his mug of lukewarm coffee, not even really seeing Eren until he’s standing right next to him.

“Hey,” Eren says, feeling awkward and out of place, not really sure if he should sit, offer to shake his hand, or maybe wait for Armin to stand and give him a hug. Armin answers that for him, standing and practically throwing himself into Eren’s arms. He’s seen him on facebook, but this is different — Armin is taller, almost as tall as him now, and more filled out— still tiny, to Eren’s one track mind, but in a different, more distant kind of way.

Eren notices that he’s shaking, though, and just thinking about why makes Eren feel physically ill.

The waitress is quick, though the place is kind of dead at this hour, not quite lunch, not quite dinner. He orders his own coffee and decides to wait before he settles on any food— his stomach isn’t quite steady enough to handle much at the moment, it seems.

“Jean has a fucking _baby_ ,” Armin blurts, much like he did over the phone, and well— Armin is nothing if not bluntly direct. Eren still flinches a little. Jean got what he wanted, in a way.

“You sure she’s his?” Eren asks, every bit the cynic living in the city has made him, and Armin scowls horribly at him, flicking his head to the side as the far-too-deep side part of his hair keeps falling into his eyes. Eren only smiles at him because it’s all so achingly familiar, because he hasn’t seen Armin in the flesh in over two years, and it feels like it was only yesterday.

“Yes. God, she looks so much like him Eren, it’s a tiny female version of him, I swear.”

Armin is practically vibrating, a confusing mix of enthusiasm and terror, or something along those lines. Eren has half a mind to reach across the table and slide his hand beneath his, palms warm from holding their respective coffee mugs— but they don’t do that anymore, haven’t since he left.

Eren glares down at his own mug now, his leg jiggling beneath the table, making the salt and pepper shakers bounce.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he says.

Armin frowns, his forehead creasing and chin crinkling the way it always does when he gets so upset that he loses control of it. They don’t owe Jean shit, not a visit to his fucking mother’s house, not anything. But Armin would never see it that way, of course he wouldn’t. Eren, at least, owes Armin this.

“Fine,” Eren relents and— the little shit, Armin’s pitiful frown instantly morphs into a pleased grin.

Eren smirks through a relieved huff of laughter, because it is somehow oddly reassuring that Armin can still play him like a fiddle after all this time. “He says one wrong thing to me, and I’m out, got it?”

Armin nods, this time less full of triumph and more solemn admittance. It’s like he’d forgotten they aren’t actually together anymore— this isn’t a trip to see Jean and his new toy, this is seeing the guy that left them in the dirt for a family he apparently isn’t even equipped to handle. Eren will bite his tongue, for now, as long as Jean has the decency to do the same.

.

Eren stops short when they’re at Jean’s doorstep, stands stupid and still, right before the stairwell up to the porch. He looks up at the peak of the roof and wills the sickening churn in his gut to stop.

He remembers this house, the hours they spent in it, a home away from their dorms. It was a shock, to say the least, for both of them to learn Jean only lived fifteen minutes away from them both, only went to school in a different district. After Eren’s mom left, Jean and this house were Eren’s only connection to this town— Armin’s grandfather’s place stopped being habitable when he started forgetting who Armin was.

Armin is a ball of nervous energy in the car. Eren had half expected Armin to have driven to the diner to meet him, considering it’s a good 45 minute walk from his grandfather’s place, but now it makes sense that he walked instead— he’s always been bad at expelling his anxiety, used to pace around the entire campus at 2am on the nights before big exams. Eren would drag Jean to walk with him, sometimes, so he felt more normal in his nervous countenance— Eren huddled into Jean’s class hoodie, looking grumpier than he felt, and Jean putting Armin’s chilly hand in his own pocket.

They would follow him off the edge of a cliff, if that’s where his route took them. Armin was a beacon to follow, a flashlight in a blackout, the thing you don’t necessarily need but you know you can’t quite function as well without. Jean always said he fell for Eren first, that Armin was more intimidating, and Eren never believed him. Sometimes, though, he understood.

With a gentle tug on his elbow, Armin snaps Eren out of his thoughts. He kind of hates how timid Armin is when he touches him now, but it makes sense. It might never be the same as it was.

Jean’s mother opens the door when they knock, Eren recognizes her immediately in her wisps of brown hair, her top heavy frame and warm smile now framed by peppered strands of grey.

“Oh my goodness, boys— where have you been?” she practically shrieks.

Both Armin and Eren parrot their monotone _“Hello Mrs. Kirstein’s”_ , as she drags them both into her kitchen. She’s a lot thinner than Eren remembers her being, much less maternal looking, in an odd way. Or maybe Eren’s view of her has just changed. Armin looks like it’s physically painful for him to have to talk to her like this, like nothing ever happened, being hassled and worried over, offered drinks and snacks while she whispers apologies at not being prepared for company.

Armin is in the middle of explaining where he lives now when something crashes upstairs, followed by a shrill shriek of delight and a familiarly toned whimper. Eren glances up in the direction of the stairs, his heartbeat rattling against his rib cage. Armin sends him a sympathetic smile that is equally as threatening as it is reassuring — a sort of _‘I’m not letting you back out of this now’._

“Jean busy?” Armin inquires, and Mrs. Kirstein’s tired sigh is a little too telling for Eren’s liking.

“Always. Go on up, he’ll be elated you’re here.”

She shoo’s them up the stairs, Armin taking the lead, braver after having done this once already. Eren clutches at the back of Armin’s coat, bunches it tight in his fist, and at least Armin lets him, allows himself to be somewhat of a shield for the potential blow of this.

They walk in on Jean currently bent over a small mound of pink and purple toned plastic on the floor of what was once the guest room— it is now clearly Jean’s, which means the basement is back to being just a basement. There’s a dark haired child on the carpet near the mess, tossing bits and pieces of the fischer price shrapnel while Jean pleads, “Minnie, baby, _stop_ it”.

She cackles for a moment, until she catches Armin creeping into the room, her eyes going wide and stunning her still. Her eyes then flick to Eren, and Eren decides he’s entered the room far enough, and stops dead in his tracks.

Armin was right— she looks just like him.

Jean is caught by the sudden placated silence of the room, looking up at the intruders and then beaming a worn down smile at them both. His eyes linger on Eren, as he says, “You guys came.”

Armin is already crawling on the ground on all fours, scooting until he’s just close enough to the child to get her eyes even wider. “Do you remember me?” he asks her.

Somehow, the fact that she nods slightly is cause for Armin to grin like an idiot, and Eren finds himself drawn to looking at Jean again, taking him in. He looks fucking haggard, to be frank, but Eren would be lying if he said that meant anything had changed— at least physically.

And Jean… Jean is gazing down at Armin and this child, his expression thick with blatant affection, and Eren can’t stand it. He shouldn’t be allowed to look at Armin like that, to look at either of them like he’s been dying without them, because he threw them both away when he made the choice to be selfish. What’s funny is Jean used to say wanting the two of them at the same time was selfish, but it never once was, not to either of them.

It’s too much, Eren finds— watching Armin with this little girl that isn’t theirs, Jean smiling at their presence, relaxing now that his kid is distracted, like they do this all the time. Jean has barely said a word, certainly nothing out of line, but he looks too fucking happy to see Armin interacting with his child, and Eren can’t do this, he can’t— before he can even begin to attempt to parse through the reasons why, he turns on his heels, thumping back down the stairs and then practically sprinting back out the door. The only thing that makes him pause after jumping down the porch stairs is that Armin would be stranded here if he left— _fuck_.

Armin is only a few seconds behind him, of course, panting and stumbling down the damp concrete towards Eren’s frozen form, stiff in some kind of impending coiled fury.

“Don’t leave, Eren, please. I know it’s weird, but it’s not the little girl’s fault–”

Eren snaps, whipping his head around, “I’m not here for _it_.”

“She is not a thing,” Jean’s voice booms, from behind Armin, ensuring his door is shut so his mother doesn’t have to hear, doesn’t have to figure out that they were ever anything more than friends, because Jean is still fucking ashamed of what they were to each other.

Bile builds in the back of Eren’s throat, the acid burning hateful brands on the back of his tongue, and he’s spitting out knives before he can even think to stop himself.

“Glad to see you did so well for yourself, Jean, was it worth it?” He snarls, voice low for the punch the words pack, Armin so frustratingly timid and unsure when he grabs for Eren’s arm. “At least I finished college, and Armin is still in school, what the fuck do you do now, Jean? Work at Walmart? Live with your fucking mom?”

“Fuck you,” Jean says quietly, his voice and face appropriately disgusted. Eren isn’t quite sure he’s not disgusted with himself, but he’s too angry to feel it right now. “Why is it always a competition with you?”

“You think that’s what this is?” Eren snaps, his voice rising as he takes an unconscious step forward. Armin’s grip tightens on his arm. “You think I’m fucking happy that you’re miserable?”

“Why the fuck are you shoving it in my face then?” Jean bites out, stepping forward himself, and now Armin is wedging himself between them, keeping the space in the middle as a buffer lest they get close enough to start literally tearing each other’s hearts out of their chests.

“Stop it guys, come on,” Armin pleads.

Eren moves to turn at Armin’s insistence, but then stops and whips back to Jean. His voice is full of far less force this time, more hurt than angry.

“I hated you for leaving us. You think just because it’s all fucked up and now you’ve got a kid, that’s just going to undo itself?”

Jean, at least, has the decency to look sorry. Not sorry enough, though, so Eren barrels onwards.

“Armin tells me this kid isn’t even a product of your marriage, so what the fuck was the point of that?”

“Stop it, Eren,” Armin says sharply.

“I was scared, okay?” Jean says, stumbling backwards like Eren pushed him, raising his hands in defeat. “I was fucking terrified of what the two of you meant to me.”

Eren turns, for the last time, hoping Armin is smart enough to follow because he will leave him here if he has to.

“Yeah, glad to see it’s still past tense for you, too,” he bites, before slamming the car door behind him, only barely missing catching his jacket in the door.

“Eren, _wait_ , jesus,” Armin says, out of breath from holding two seemingly magnetic forces apart, throwing himself in Eren’s car and gripping the handle on the door while Eren peels out of Jean’s driveway.

He only pretends he doesn’t catch Jean turning to watch them leave before heading back through the front door.

.

“I’m sorry, Armin,” Eren says quietly, idling out the front of Armin’s grandfather’s house.

Eren turns to look at Armin and instantly regrets it. His eyes are watery, shining in tears and glimmering in the glare of the early evening sun. He smiles at Eren like it’s okay, and Eren misses the stern solitude that Armin managed to school himself into when it all fell to shit before— Eren always thought Armin would be the most okay out of the three of them. He’s writing a novel now, doing well for himself, finishing his degree. He's fine.

Armin doesn’t say anything in response, he only shrugs like he knew this might happen, even if the heartbreak is written all over his face, leaking down his cheeks. _I miss you so much_ , Eren wants to say, but he can’t. If anything this little impromptu trip down memory lane has only solidified that fact— and Jean has one, solitary thing to love now. He didn’t need them before, he doesn’t need them now.

Still, it hurts to have to say goodbye to Armin, especially in a home he once let himself in and out of freely. Maybe they can reconnect, even if it still feels delicate and easily broken. Eren might need more time, but they have distance for padding now, at least.

Eren stops at the gas station by the diner on his way home, snags a pack of gum and two redbulls, gulps down the first can in one go. _Fuck it_ , he thinks. Just a blip in his new routine.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Mina seems to be in one of those moods where nothing is enough— the world isn’t bright enough, sounds aren’t loud enough. She turns into a black hole of siphoning energy, a tiny centrifugal point to which noise and chaos gravitates.

Or at least, it seems that way to Jean. She’s been half sobbing, half giggling over her apparently dire need for juice for the better part of an hour, and Jean has had barely a wink’s worth of sleep.

He has time, at least. Her busy modes tend to have her up well and early. Jean is still on the afternoon shift rotation at work, for now, so the only rush is getting her to daycare on time. If they weren’t such fucking punctuality nazis there, Jean might skip all this and just drop her off a little later.

Mina is about halfway through a garbled nonsensical sentence, tugging Jean’s beanie off of his head in her tiny, deceptively unthreatening fist, when Jean catches sight of Armin over at the part of the counter where people either wait for drinks or stir copious amounts of sugar in them (if you’re Jean). He quickly orders a kid’s sized OJ, a medium mocha for himself, and then very unsubtly makes his way over to Armin.

“Hey!” Armin says when he spots them, voice caught somewhere between surprise and resigned expectancy. Jean is just enough on edge that his first instinct is to start bitching about Eren, but he thinks if Armin ever willingly walks away from him— not just following someone else like he had— he might just lose his mind.

“Morning,” Jean greets, hoisting Mina up on his otherwise completely straight hip. She seems intent on making everything difficult, babbling as she pulls Jean’s hood from out underneath his jacket while Jean tries to balance pouring the juice into her sippy cup from the cardboard one. Armin looks appropriately amused, at least.

“Jesus, if I’d only come back home to visit sooner I imagine we would’ve run into each other a while ago,” Armin notes, with the smallest hint of real regret, something Jean isn’t ready to let himself latch onto yet.

“Yeah, my life is kind of one big long errand right now.”

Mina has now completely tugged Jean’s hood out from his jacket, along with knocking the beanie right off the top of his head, all with a triumphant squeak. Armin laughs, but Jean forgives him immediately because he picks up the hat and hands it to Mina— which would be the wise thing to do, except Mina is still in destructo-mode, which means she fairly punches Jean’s jaw as she playfully whacks him in the head with the knitted hat.

“Minnie, stop,” he pleads, swatting her hands away from his head and snatching the hat to stuff into his pocket instead. She pouts and looks about ready to burst into an act of tears, and Jean would be more embarrassed if he were less tired than this, still struggling to put the cap back on her sippy cup.

Armin must be born of saints, or something similar, because he reaches into his own paper bag, pulls out a torn piece of his chocolate bagel and hands it to Mina to chew on.

At least, that’s Jean’s excuse for staring at him the way he does— like he’s got all the answers, like maybe he always had them, like maybe Jean can stop pretending he hasn’t been miserable without a few key components in his life.

“Did Eren go home?” he asks Armin without thinking, Mina happily sucking on her soggy bit of bagel, appeased to some form of stillness for now.

The smile that Armin had while he was staring at Jean’s daughter flickers when his focus shifts to him. “Yeah. He has class and he interns for a production company now. Graduate school and a decent job.”

“Really?” Jean asks.

It doesn’t justify Eren’s outburst the other day, but it explains some of it. Jean was the one everyone thought would excel.

“He’s doing really well for himself, yeah. I convinced him to come stay at my grandfather’s place for the weekend, after...” Armin trails off, looking mildly guilty for more than one reason.

Jean is jealous— of course he is. He will always be jealous of them without him, of the both of them equally, terribly. Not of who they are, or who they might become, but because they can be together and not have to choose. Jean’s exhausted brain chooses not to supply the fact that Armin and Eren actually did not stay together after he left, which will forever be the world’s greatest mystery to him.

“You guys can stay at my house,” he blurts, running on an autopilot setting that’s nearly four years old now. “The basement is still in tact, I mean. I’m only in the guest room because it’s easier with Mina.”

Armin smiles a little sadly, the corners of his mouth curving in a gut wrenching kind of sympathy, one Jean hates the sight of.

“I think we’ll be okay. I need to get going,” he says quickly. He gives Mina another torn piece of his bagel from within the bag— to which Jean beams in pride at her swift and enunciated response of _“thank you”—_  and then leaves the shop behind with a modest wave.

He’s not really sure why he offered that. It’s not like he expected Armin to take him up on it, but maybe it’s like baring your throat, displaying a weakness without having to say _“hey, I think I’m not okay”._

.

Jean typically wakes up the same time as Mina.

Which is usually to the way she sings along in enthusiastic gibberish with the birds outside their window, somewhere in the region of before-the-damn-sun-comes-up o’clock— except today it’s about 20 minutes after the alarm on his phone was supposed to go off, and Mina is still asleep.

Fuck.

The baby bag is ready, at least (thank you mom) and she has enough clean clothes to pick out a somewhat socially acceptable outfit (thank you mom, again). Mina rubs her face sleepily all while Jean tugs the tiny chiffon shirt over her head, her sleep-swollen pout and tired eyes only managing to make Jean yearn for the warmth of his bed.

And it wouldn’t be such a big deal, if Jean’s life hadn’t just been turned back onto its head, again. His boss decided to up and switch Jean to the morning shift, without really much warning at all, so on top of getting Mina to daycare, he also has to get himself somewhat presentable and to the office in time. Calling it an office is a stretch— it’s an old hollowed out warehouse that’s been converted and re-branded twice into various half-functioning call centers, and really Jean could show up in his pj’s and probably get away with it, but he’d rather like to keep this job, so he doesn’t.

Mina cooperates with about as much attentive ease as a sack of potatoes, a heavy and imbalanced weight, awkward to have to shift around when you’re in a rush to get somewhere.

He tosses her half-awake form over his shoulder as he enters the bagel shop— she needs to eat before the daycare will take her, and it’s always seemed quicker just to pick something up on the way. With the hassle of parking and waiting in line, it probably isn’t, but it’s less effort, or so Jean has managed to convince himself.

Somehow, now that he’s got somewhere to be, the line at the bagel shop seems insufferable. Armin is there, he catches sight of him in his peripheral vision, waving to Mina. Mina waves back even, but Jean is too tense to notice or respond, barely has enough wits about him to spew his order— juice and banana bread for Mina, mocha for himself— without feeling like he should just be saying fuck all this and bolting out the door.

Jean grabs their things, doesn’t bother fussing with Mina’s cup this time, and rushes back out to the car. He buckles Mina into her seat, keeps the juice up front with him— he’ll figure out what the fuck to do with it later.

And then the slow tumble downward begins.

Jean’s mother gave him cash this morning. It was initially intended for gas money, but now has managed to morph into a beacon of much more vital importance, because Jean’s car _won’t fucking start_.

“Fuck,” he yells, immediately regretting it when he glances at the rear view mirror and catches Mina’s startled expression. “Sorry baby, daddy didn’t mean to curse.”

50 bucks. 10 of that could get him a cab to the daycare. But then it would be another 10 to get himself to work. Then probably another 50 altogether to get someone to tow his car while he’s gone, never mind the extra 20 to get him home.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jean curses again, this time silently, only mouthing out his despair. Mina looks appropriately subdued, in that way that children seem to do when they know something’s wrong.

And then, like some kind of angel, like a shimmering ray of white light breaking through rain clouds, Armin chooses this very moment to exit the cafe. Jean has never been a big fan of fate, but if a gift horse looks you in the mouth— or something like that.

“Hey, Armin?” he asks, trying his best not to sound too desperate, jolting to stand outside the door of his car.

Armin smiles at him, waves amicably as he approaches. He must pick up on something too, because his smile drops when he gets closer— probably close enough to see the hideous anxiety written all over Jean’s face.

“Something happen?” he asks.

“I need—” Jean’s throat tightens on him. There is nothing in the world he hates more than asking for help, but this is bigger than his pride— this is keeping this shitty call center job for Mina, this is getting Mina to daycare on time. This is not becoming a deadbeat fucking dad, this is not becoming another version of his own father, or even of Grisha Jaeger. “I need help. You couldn’t watch Mina for me today, could you?”

Armin immediately rears backwards, a kind of instinctive reaction, one that hurts to see up close.

“I don’t— um—”

“Just until the afternoon, my mom gets off early. I’ll even pay you back for it, I just really have to get to work.”

Armin visibly swallows, and then glances behind Jean at Mina in the back seat. He must be soft on her already, because he smiles a half-tilted sympathetic thing, and then turns to Jean and says, “Alright.”

Jean is still in full panic mode, so fumbling to get Mina’s car seat into Armin’s grandfather’s station wagon is a tussle in itself. Armin holds Mina on his hip while Jean fights with the loose old seat belts in the car, stopping occasionally to freak out because he thinks he’s forgetting something.

“Hey, hey,” Armin says, after a particularly frustrated punch to Armin’s backseat has him placing a calming hand in between Jean’s shoulder blades, the other holding his daughter up. “I’ll do this, you call a cab.”

Jean stands out from the seat, pulling at his own hair, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’ll just. Yeah.”

Armin sets Mina onto the seat next to where the chair is, climbing in to focus on buckling the thing in, talking to her all while he does it.

 _“How did you sleep miss Mina?”_ and _“What do you want to do today miss Mina?”_

Jean gets a little lost in listening to it— the gentle cadence with which he says her name, the almost fond tone of his voice. Just to help himself focus, he walks to the other side of the parking lot while he calls himself a cab.

By the time he walks back, Mina is quite happily strapped into her seat, holding her sippy cup full of juice, which he didn’t even ask Armin to do.

“What kind of things should we do? I don’t have much at my place that’s kid friendly—”

“Oh,” Jean says, tearing his eyes away from his daughter, all put together and happily sipping her juice. He hands Armin his keys, since he won’t need them for a while anyway. “Take her to my place, all her stuff is there. I’ll call my mom, let her know she doesn’t have to pick Mina up.”

Armin takes them after a moment’s consideration, nods almost dutifully. Jean could fucking kiss him for doing this— for taking on Jean’s failures so easily, with immediate understanding of his priorities, not bothering to ask why he’s late, or what happened to the car, just getting shit done. Jean’s always admired the way Armin handles himself.

It’s a good thing the taxi pulls up when it does, because Armin stands a little awkwardly, and Jean is just enough distraught to forget himself and actually do it— to kiss the corner of Armin’s mouth goodbye for the day, like the last four years haven’t even happened.

.

Jean tries to keep himself from worrying about it, from trying to nail the logistics down of what he’s going to do with his fucking car, how he’s going to deal with this tomorrow. Only a day until the weekend, at least, that gives him some time to figure things out.

Work sucks, as expected. All the cubes are full, and then someone ends up taking his seat after lunch. He’s docked an hour’s worth of pay for having to wait forty five minutes for a spare seat before his shift and then another fifteen for after lunch.

They don’t drug test at this place either, they count people as bodies, as numbers instead of vital and important infrastructure, so half of the younger population of his coworkers smell like a cross between a barnyard and a grow house. It’s altogether disgusting and miserable, and Jean is so ready to get home, to see his daughter and her practically edible chubby cheeks, to see how amazing Armin is with her, even though he isn’t likely to stick around and wait for Jean to get there.

Jean grabs a taxi home, only just turning his phone back on, since they have sensors all over the building to check for bluetooth or 4g connectivity. They don’t give you a warning for that shit— your ass is out the door, so Jean doesn’t test his luck.

There’s a text, from a new number that Jean quickly learns is Armin.

_‘got number from your mom. left mina with her, car is fixed, all is fine. mina is an angel’_

Jean grins like a fucking dope, relief hitting him like a bolt of lightening, something electric enough to get his heart pumping, but numbing enough that it’s not out of panic anymore. He doesn’t understand how the car can be fixed, he’ll get to that when he gets to it, but it’s the last part that gets him— Armin calling Mina an angel.

By the time he’s home, Mina is fed and happy, and Jean counts his lucky stars. Apparently Armin got his car fixed, according to his mom— bad battery, nearly one hundred big ones that his mom says Armin refused to take repayment for. Jean feels like shit for that, but he’ll pay Armin back eventually, for all of it.

Mina isn’t supposed to sleep in his bed anymore, but Jean is exhausted and a little shaky with anxiety, and sometimes Jean just needs her there, a reminder of why this is always, always going to be worth it.

She’s drifting off, curled into Jean’s pillow. She keeps blinking herself awake for some reason, her eyes crossing cutely when she nods off again. Jean figures he’s read enough for the night, putting his book down. He can go to sleep the same time as her, since he’ll probably get up the same time too. At least this time he remembers to set his alarm as a backup.

“Sometimes I think I could eat your nose right off your face and not feel guilty about it,” he mumbles to her, gently pinching the very tip of her nose. He’ll never get over how cute she is, how anything that came partly from him could be so beautiful.

Mina giggles quietly, says, “No, daddy,” as she puts out her little arm to hold his face back, fearing the inevitable first chomp.

Jean pulls her hand away from his chin, places it back down to the bed, stroking the small bumps of her knuckles with his thumb.

“Go to sleep, baby,” he says, when she tries to blink herself awake again.

“Can Armin come over again?” she asks out of nowhere, pronouncing Armin more like _‘Au-min’_. Jean is selfishly so, so grateful she’s taken to him so well.

“If he wants to, sure.”

Mina is asleep by the time he says it, conked in less than half a second, the way she always seems to do. Jean can tell with the way she breathes a little heavier, quicker. He watches the way her eyelashes flutter, he can see her eyelids moving— she’s dreaming about something already.

“Did you like Armin, Minnie?” he whispers, careful not to wake her but stuck in a place where he’s drowsy enough that it’s okay to ask these kinds of off-limit questions. He smooths some hair away from her face, down the curve of her cheek. “Daddy misses him. _Them_ ,” he adds quietly, struck by some misplaced thread of nostalgia, barely aware of what he’s saying. He drifts off himself not long after, his hand tucked beneath his daughter’s chin, his heart finally slowing down from the day.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Armin is shamefully more than surprised that Eren actually showed up for the weekend. He’s shivering beneath a parka, bright and early, his hair soft and sticking up with static, like he’d jumped into his car right after a shower and let it dry on the way.

He hugs Eren once the door is open, an attempt at a friendly greeting, because Armin thinks he wouldn’t be able to stand it if he couldn’t touch him anymore, if a simple hug was too much.

Eren briefly greets his grandfather, who obviously must remember him in some fashion, but acts like he doesn’t. Eren smirks like he knows, takes the new branded name of 'Michael' in his stride, and then waltzes up to Armin’s room without having to be told or invited, stomping his feet on the stairs just to be obnoxious to the old man, even though he probably can’t even hear it.

“Jesus, you haven’t changed anything,” Eren huffs, out of breath from storming up the stairs, shucking his jacket as he takes in the state of Armin’s childhood bedroom.

“I haven’t exactly been here for all that long,” Armin chuckles.

Eren collapses onto his bed, falls backwards and narrowly misses thunking his head against the angle of the roof. He did it all the time when they were kids— when Eren would try and crawl into Armin’s bed from his sleeping bag on the ground in the middle of the night— and Armin laughs remembering it.

Eren smiles at him, lifts his head a little. “What do you wanna do? The roller rink is abandoned now, I heard, we could go there and explore, take flashlights, maybe some paint cans.”

Armin settles in the wooden chair on his desk, sitting slowly and gripping his knees, and by the way Eren sits up and looks warily across the room at him, it’s like he knows what’s coming.

“I think Jean really needs help, Eren—”

“Oh, fuck, I knew you would do this—”

“Hear me out,” Armin snaps, as gentle as his quickened pulse will allow. “He’s got a kid—”

“That’s his problem, not ours!” Eren yells, groaning when Armin flinches at it. Eren crawls across the floor, sitting in front of Armin and pulling his hands away from his knees. Eren plays with Armin’s fingers absently, trying to distract himself from looking at Armin’s face. “He made me feel like shit because of how I felt about you— about all of us.”

“Eren, this isn’t about us anymore,” Armin placates, turning his hands so that he’s linking Eren’s fingers with his. “It’s about him, as a person, and this baby he can hardly take care of on his own.”

Eren grunts like he gets it, like he’s conceding that Armin is right, as usual, which makes Armin smirk a little. He squeezes Eren’s hand and says, “I still care about him. Enough to care that he needs help enough to have asked me for it the other day.”

“How long are you planning on staying here?” Eren asks, avoiding the subject of Armin spending an entire day alone with Jean’s baby, because Armin thinks Eren is still in denial that it even happened, like it was some form of betrayal.

“I can stay for a while.”

A while is only a small white lie. No one has to know that he lost the lease, that this is really the only home he has to go back to now.

“Why should we help him?” Eren pleads, gazing up at Armin with a petulant frown.

“Because he needs it. Because between us we have time and money, and Jean has neither and a child.”

.

The air in Eren’s car is tense. _Eren_ is tense, understandably, but he still agreed to do it, to try for the sake of proving that they are decent human beings. Eren still seems to think that Jean thought they were monsters for how they spread their love so thin, despite Jean being an active and willing participant— but Armin knows better. Jean just panicked.

Eren spends a little less time brooding up at the house, walking with the slight bow to his legs emphasized by skinny jeans and a large coat. He keeps tugging it down, covering his neck with the hood, that nervous thing he does when he can’t sit still. Armin wants to calm him down, to pinch the bumps of his spine between the knuckles of his middle and index fingers. He would, except he doesn’t know if that’s okay to do anymore, and Eren is not so subtly shoving his shoulder to get him to knock.

There’s a thump and a squeal from behind the door, high enough in pitch that Eren flinches. Armin bites his lips to keep from smiling— he’s already weak to the little one and her bursts of noise.

Jean opens the door with Mina squirming on his hip. He looks like someone who’s had a tornado landed on them and is moderately shocked to have survived it— eyes wild and exhausted, hair a disheveled mess, nothing like the carefully put together exterior Jean used to boast, the preppy undergrad.

Eren stays dead silent, while Jean looks stunned stupid, so Armin decides to take the wheel.

“We have an idea,” Armin blurts, a thrill of excitement shooting through him when Jean’s mouth quirks into an almost smile, and Mina hides behind the sleeve of her father’s hoodie, grinning at Armin like she’s embarrassed.

“You— What? Eren—”

“Hi Miss Mina,” Armin interrupts the potential explosion, deciding to take the reigns on this one. He crouches down a little and waves at her, snorts when she buries her face in Jean’s armpit with a squeak to hide from him.

Jean stumbles backwards, barely keeping his grip on his daughter, which Armin keeps a careful eye on, in case he needs to leap to her rescue. Jean can’t seem to stop staring at Eren like he’s holding the gun that shot the life out of him. Keeping momentum in mind, and not really wanting Mina to have to witness an argument, Armin pushes past him into the house, dragging Eren by the sleeve up to the guest room.

They get him cornered, Eren sitting awkwardly in the lounge chair, while Armin sits on the ground covered by Mina’s toys, half hoping Jean will let Mina go to make her way over and play with him. He doesn’t though— she stays firmly in his lap, all while Armin tells him they think that they could replace Jean’s daycare.

“Eren has a few days off a week when he’s not working or in class, and I can cover the rest. We would just watch her here or take her out to the pond or the park,” Armin spouts off almost professionally.

“You agree with this?” Jean asks Eren, bouncing Mina on his knee, a little more frantic than necessary with the way her head is bobbing around. Jean still looks at Eren like he’s afraid he’ll storm away again, which might be a good thing— at least for the duration of this conversation.

“No,” Eren says on impulse, and Armin very pointedly rolls his eyes, “I don’t know.”

“I’ll pay you guys,” Jean blurts, and Armin grins helplessly at him giving in so quickly. “I can afford the daycare, I was just screwed because of the car.”

“You’re not paying me,” Armin quickly amends, “You can pay Eren if he’ll let you.”

“Fuck off, I don’t want his money,” Eren snaps.

Jean, rather exaggeratedly, covers Mina’s ears with cupped palms. “Hey, no more swearing around her, alright?”

“Fine,” Eren grumbles, leaning back in his seat, his leg bouncing too, but lacking the small child on it that Jean’s has. “Sorry Mina.”

Jean’s careful scowl grows into a smile, and Armin’s chest feels so full of hope he half worries he might float away with it.

.

They go back to Armin’s grandfather’s house, Eren deciding to stay over for a night on a whim of nostalgia. Eren is clingier than usual, which means he’s upset and trying to avoid discussing it. He slides beneath the covers without really asking, abandoning the dusty old sleeping bag that’s older than they are, and Armin grins helplessly — it’s like when they were kids. Eren doesn’t seem as taken by idea of childish glee. Instead he buries his face in Armin’s chest, tangles their legs together, bony knees clashing.

And then Eren starts to kiss him, and Armin gasps over the urge to shout. He kisses the delicate skin on the inside of Armin’s elbow, trailing up his arm. He kisses Armin’s collarbone, his neck, any inch of skin he can seemingly reach. When Eren gets frustrated by how little skin is on offer he grunts in frustration and shoves his head under Armin’s t-shirt.

“What are you doing?” Armin gasps, his stomach clenching at the first cool, wet press of Eren’s lips just above his navel.

“Don’t tell me I can’t kiss you,” Eren grumbles, his head still covered by the shirt.

Armin laughs, though it sounds suspiciously more like a moan. “This is ridiculous.”

“It isn’t.”

“ _Eren_ ,” Armin says, his voice wispy and faint as he reaches for him, tugs his t-shirt over Eren’s newly disheveled mess of hair. He pats it down, but the static makes it impossible, so he tries to pull Eren by the chin to look at him properly.

Eren, unsurprisingly, acts stubborn. He grabs Armin’s hand and starts kissing his palm, his fingers, the inside of his wrist.

“Is it bad I still want us to be together?” he asks quietly.

Armin knows he doesn’t mean just the two of them. He also knows that he’s being so blindly affectionate because seeing Jean again has triggered something in him, something he thought he could live without.

“No,” Armin says, “It’s not bad. I want it too.”

Eren stops and rests the side of his face against Armin’s stomach, clinging to him. “We would always come second to that kid,” he mumbles. “And we still wouldn’t be in a real relationship to him.”

“I think he’s starting to see now that relationships aren’t so cut and dry.”

“Maybe,” Eren huffs, and he begins to settle down, his pounding heartbeat steadying against Armin’s hip.

Armin thinks about telling Eren he still loves him, he never stopped, but he doesn’t. It seems like something Eren might already know, something that would only be condescending if uttered out loud right now, in his current state of emotional disarray.

Instead of trying to fill the silence with words, Armin cards his fingers through Eren’s hair and smiles when Eren, half asleep, grunts out a quiet, “The kid’s cute, at least.”

.

Armin eases Eren into things as best he can. Eren seems more curious toward Mina than hostile, which is a good starting place, he figures. Eren has always had a tendency to dive into things headfirst, which isn’t usually a bad thing, but it could potentially mean he’ll latch onto the idea that Mina is something negative.

He doesn’t seem to think that way at all, though. If anything he seems a little lost.

“What am I supposed to do with her?” Eren asks Armin in a voice tight with subdued panic, his arms hovering around Jean’s pint-sized daughter. She is currently tearing up a newspaper Eren took from the breakfast table— his definition of ‘toys’ needs work, Armin notes to himself.

“Well,” Armin begins, taking a moment to collect himself, biting down on his lower lip to keep from laughing at the way Eren doesn’t seem to know what to do. He’s stopped bracketing her body with his arms at least. “You feed her, you play with her. You can even talk to her, she’s a good listener.”

Eren sighs, sitting back onto his heels heavily. “Armin, do you realize how fucked up this is—”

Armin hisses. “Eren!”

“ _Fudged—_ up… this is.”

Armin shrugs, tucking a stray strand of hair behind one ear. “Of course I do, but how quickly did you drop everything to come to me last week?”

Eren turns to him then, scowling. “That was different, you never threw me away.”

“Neither did Jean,” Armin says, as gently as he can, because sometimes he thinks he forgets that neither him nor Eren ever put up much of a fight. Eren because he thought it was hopeless, and Armin because… well, Jean wasn’t ready. “He just… ran away from us.”

Eren focuses back on Mina again, though Armin can’t help but notice the way his face twists in something like pain. He shakes it off, leans down so he’s at eye-level with the child.

“What do you like to do?” Eren asks her, very seriously.

His direct attention catches her off-guard, and she sits somewhat petrified, frozen in the middle of tearing up another shred of newspaper. She very carefully continues her tear after the pause, watching Eren for his reaction to it.

“Mindless destruction,” Eren says, picking up the tattered remnants of the weekend news. “I can get behind this.”

.

Armin tries his best to avoid any potential confrontations with Jean’s mother, and not for any other reason than he knows he still holds onto his bitter resentment for her influencing Jean’s decision. She got what she initially wanted, and the potential to lash out over this particular topic is too tempting and readily available.

She doesn’t seem… to hate them, like Armin had maybe thought she had, or would. Even at the wedding, though Armin had paid little attention outside of keeping Eren afloat, she smiled at them. Jean had probably just never told her about them.

Despite his efforts, she manages to grab Armin one afternoon when he’s watching Mina by himself, ready to leave her in grandma’s care for the night. She grips his shoulder tight in one hand, offers him some sweet tea with a slice of sugared lemon. Armin smiles at it, at the etched plastic glass, the colorful straw. Jean is so spoiled sometimes, they’d always known.

“You know,” she begins, and then peeks out the window like she’s waiting for someone, “—he sure missed you boys.”

Armin’s blood runs a little cold, like the first sip of the cool tea slipping down the length of his spine, though not nearly as pleasant. She says it like she knows — or that she’s now coming to know. Armin isn’t sure which is worse.

There are things he can say, and things he can’t.

 _“It’s your fault,”_ is something he can’t.

Instead he settles on, “I’m glad we can be here for him now.”

It seems appropriate. Focusing on now rather than before, keeping it brief. She smiles a little sadly, and Armin panics. He thanks her for the barely drunk tea, and leaves without giving it too much thought.

She’s grateful, that’s all it is. They’re here to help her, too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The worst part about this whole fucking thing is that Eren sort of expected it to be Jean that bowed out of it, from day one.

It’s not that Jean was tricked, or ever outright said no to what they were, but there was an aura of trepidation, a sense of always feeling like the inability to classify them as ‘something’ made it harder to stomach.

Eren doesn’t even remember it the way most people remember things— a beginning, middle, and end. It’s more a sharp, static middle with a hazy beginning and an abrupt, butchered end. The middle, though…

It all happened by way of traumatizing Armin one clouded winter afternoon. There was a thin layer of snow on the ground, the edges of the windows were fogged, and Eren will still tell you this was the single best day of his life.

You see, Armin was meant to be out of town, and hooking up with Jean wasn’t something that was planned so much as it just started happening more and more frequently. Jean was there, Jean pursued him, Jean flirted like a shameless whore, Jean helped Eren study, Jean actually seemed to _care_. So maybe it wasn’t planned, but that doesn’t mean it was flippant.

So, Armin walking through the door was a shock, to say the least. Eren had Jean on his bunk, bent forward and groaning, his face pressed into the pillow he had gripped tightly to his chest. Jean had jerked his head upwards at the sound of the door, cursed with this barely-there voice, and then wriggled away from Eren as best he could, pulling the sheets over himself in a tangle. Even Eren was a little shocked, but this wasn’t anything particularly new— Armin had always been more openly curious than anyone he’d ever known.

Only Armin didn’t leave. He walked forward, almost casual after closing the door, and then took a seat in the chair by the desk, watching them. Jean’s ruffled head of hair emerged from the sheets, staring at Armin in quiet shock. Armin crossed his legs, not unsubtly pressing his palm to his groin.

“You can continue,” Armin had whispered, and Jean whimpered, whipping his head back to send Eren the most pitifully confused looking glare.

“If you want,” Eren said, to Jean— and to Armin, in a less direct way.

“Shit, are you guys a thing?” Jean had asked, and then whipped his head back to Armin. “I thought you were, but I wasn’t sure— Jesus, Eren, you could have fucking told me—”

“We haven’t,” Armin said, because up until that point in time, it was the truth. There was a mutual sense of comfort, of nights in high school spent jerking off in the same bed, but it was never more a ‘thing’ than just being close to Armin, always. Armin paused then, stuttered out, “I, um. I can leave?”

“No!”

Jean had said it, and Eren glanced down in surprise, laughing quietly at the instinctive way Jean reached out towards Armin. It was as much an admission as any— Eren had always wondered why Jean hadn’t admitted this earlier, but his crush on Armin was always the hardest to decipher. It’s like he thought Armin was too good, somehow. Like he was above sex and wanting, something out of reach— which only made Jean’s outstretched arm all the more amusing.

Armin approached, stripping out of his shirt, his trousers, kicking off his shoes. Jean sat up on his knees and whimpered into Armin’s mouth when he held his face and kissed him. Eren resumed at a gradual pace, easing back into Jean slowly, groaning into the sweaty skin of his nape. The sounds of Armin kissing Jean felt like liquid heat down the back of his spine, and Eren doesn’t remember much else, the rest just seemed to fall into place on its own.

They woke up in a tangle on Eren’s bed the next morning, and Eren remembers the immediate rush of determination— remembering what they did and what they could keep possibly doing had Eren’s mind running a mile a minute.

Jean had woken first after Eren, glancing down at Armin’s thigh draped across his hips, and then up to the press of his hand over Eren’s chest. He looked up at Eren’s face, scanning it for something, his brows pulled together. He took a moment to think and asked, “What the fuck happened?”

Eren laughed, warm and impossibly fond, wiping a smudge of sleep out from under Jean’s eye. “Something amazing,” he said, grinning stupidly.

“You and Armin aren’t…?”

Eren shook his head. “Not anymore than you and me.”

Jean frowned, and he looked almost a little hurt. “So you have been fucking him?”

“No. That was a bad comparison—”

“God,” Jean groaned, running a hand down his tired face. “This is messed up, isn’t it?”

“It’s only sex,” Eren had said, shushing him for fear of waking Armin. As pleasantly peachy as Armin could be most times, he had all the charm of a grizzly bear when woken too early in the morning. “It isn’t even much of a conscious decision, all of this is impulsive.”

Jean glared at Eren like he’d grown a second head. “Some people have clear preferences, dude.”

“Sure they do, but that doesn’t have to dictate the limits of your attraction,” Eren said, and he held Jean’s chin in one firm hand to make the point. He chewed it over in his mind, parsed through the various ways of getting Jean to understand what he meant without sounding like he was fueling his own agenda. He leaned over Jean, bracing himself for the worst, and bravely pushed at Armin’s shoulder until he grumbled, blinking himself awake. Eren was always the one people assumed would prod dangerous animals with sticks in their cages, though this was the closest he ever got.

“Armin, do you want to make out with Jean right now?”

Jean made an odd choking sound. “Jesus fuck, Eren—”

“Mm, yeah?” Armin mumbled, rubbing tiredly at his face. Eren had loved him for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like when it was all new, when Armin seemed as untouchable and pure as he figured Jean saw him, up until this particular point in time. He didn’t push much, only gently guided Jean’s face to the pillow, aligning him with Armin.

Jean, for all his earlier hesitation, melted like butter on a hot skillet beneath the sleepy warmth of Armin’s mouth. Eren scooted up behind Jean, shivering at every gentle sound their mouths made, the soft clacks of their lips moving wetly together. Jean pulled away a little at the press of Eren’s mouth to his neck, and Eren seized his moment.

“You think you’re not allowed to want this because you’re already attracted to someone else, right?”

Jean nodded, and Armin blearily traced the outline of his lips with his thumb, all while Eren watched from over the vantage of Jean’s shoulder.

“You think you can’t have your cake and eat it, no one is that lucky, but we _can_ be, Jean. We are, right now — we are that lucky.”

Eren licked Jean’s pulse, tugging the lobe of his ear into his mouth and trying not to groan to audibly when Jean whimpered into Armin’s sleepy kisses.

It took Jean a while to get used to it. Armin was always persistently asking if he was okay with it, that he didn’t want anyone to be uncomfortable, and it was in those moments that Jean seemed the most sure— that it wasn’t just Eren pushing for this anymore, it was both of them. All of them.

Their night walks across campus when Armin couldn’t sleep turned into moonlit strolls holding hands and playing with Armin’s hair when he finally sat on one of the benches and leaned on one of their shoulders, succumbing to the sleep that otherwise eluded him. Their study sessions turned into kisses, turned into touching, sometimes turned into Jean coming down the back of Armin’s throat while Eren watched. They were a carefully crafted mess, one that Eren cherished more than anything, and he knew he’d gotten too attached too quickly, but it still didn’t dull the pain any more when all of it was ripped out from under him so suddenly.

.

Eren warms to Mina much quicker than he’d been expecting. Sometimes he finds himself sitting on the floor, putting himself on her level, and just watching her be. It’s a minor flashback to his days smoking weed in the dorms thinking that Sasha’s puppy could talk, but it’s a lot more than that. She likes things, and she very clearly does not like others. She likes when Eren talks to her, she seems to perk up and listen to the sound of his voice, but she doesn’t like it when Eren yells— mostly at Jean, not intentionally. He feels guilty for every single time it makes her flinch.

And then there are the parts that hurt.

The parts where she is so much a part of Jean, and so very obviously a part of someone else Eren doesn’t even care to know. Eren can’t imagine someone wanting to give this up— this little piece of life, a piece of yourself— and it only makes it worse when he thinks of what Jean had to give up to get to this point.

Eren isn’t quite sure he’s ready to forgive completely. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be fascinated by the way Mina frowns when she’s concentrated, or by the way she pulls at things she knows are hers to keep— toys, Jean, food. If their relationship had dissolved into a darkened tunnel with no clear direction, then Mina could be the bright light at the end of it. But thinking about her that way seems unfair, and Eren tries his best to keep it all separate. Mina isn’t his.

.

It’s one of the few rare days that Armin decides it’s okay to leave Eren alone with Mina. It’s not to say Armin doesn’t trust Eren— though Eren felt that way at first, and then felt like shit for snapping at Armin defensively over it— but more that he’s worried about leaving Eren alone with himself in this environment.

Eren learned a long time ago not to take offense to Armin’s worry. It still stings a little, though.

Jean’s mother is downstairs, which makes him intensely uncomfortable for reasons he doesn’t like to think about. Lord knows what she thinks of him— of all of them, really. Jean always kept his family separate, compartmentalizing the various aspects of his personal life in a way that probably wasn’t meant to be as insulting as it was.

Eren is about to leave. Jean’s mother has been here for a few hours, so whatever peace she needed from child rearing is probably enough for one day. Eren is laying flat on his stomach, chin rested on the fold of his hands, watching as Mina fastidiously arranges a set of neon colored buckets in order from big to small.

“You’re too smart for your age,” Eren grumbles, more fond than anything else. Mina makes an indecipherable noise, speaks in what Eren has come to learn is her own little language, of sorts. “Same,” he agrees to her babble, because having pretend conversations with her makes him somehow feel more sane in this house. It makes absolutely no sense, but no one has to know.

Mina gets a little rowdy, upends one of the buckets in something like a random act of rage, and then swaps their order around. He’s about to gently correct the one she has out of place, but then Jean speaks up from behind him, his presence entirely unannounced.

“You’re so good with her,” Jean says, his voice achingly warm. Eren pushes up so he’s sitting, his head whipping around toward the intrusion. Jean is leaning against the doorway of their room, watching them both with his arms crossed over his chest, smiling a little sadly.

“Daddy!” she shrieks, and Eren steadies her when she nearly tumbles over her own feet in her rush to get to Jean.

Jean lifts her up, smothers her tiny face in kisses, and then holds her against his hip, murmuring a quiet, “ _now_ you see me,” which makes Eren snicker to himself. She’d been too focused on her buckets. Eren smiles at the mess she made, despite his resolve to keep himself as emotionless as possible around Jean.

“She usually takes forever to warm to people,” Jean says, glancing away from his daughter towards Eren.

Eren swiftly drops the smile. “She likes Armin more than me.”

Jean huffs a little, letting Mina go when she wriggles to be free from his grasp. “Would’ve never thought you’d be the one comparing imbalances in affection,” he says, and Eren frowns deeply.

“You could’ve told me you were coming home early. I’m leaving now anyway.” Eren stands to get his bag, hiking one strap of his backpack over his shoulder. He has a long fucking way to drive, unless he stays with Armin again. Part of him feels like being alone tonight, for whatever reason.

“You can stay here, you know,” Jean says, effectively stopping Eren dead in his tracks on his way down the stairs. “If you want to. If it’s easier than staying at Armins? I don’t know.”

“I have class,” Eren says gruffly, and he continues down the stairs.

Jean grabs Mina with a speed that Eren realizes is entirely reflexive and new when she goes to crawl towards the stairs after Eren. With her in his grip, he carries her down, hands her over to his mother, and then sprints out the front door after Eren. Eren only stops again when Jean’s hand grips his elbow.

“What do I have to say to you?” Jean asks, his voice somehow quieter outside than it was, like he’s still got so many secrets to keep from the world.

Eren sends him his stoniest glare, though Jean doesn’t seem entirely convinced.

Jean takes a steadying breath, starts again. “What do I have to do for you to know that leaving you was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made?”

It feels like someone’s cut the bottom out from his stomach, left it to hang open and raw. He thinks about all the nights alone where he’d hoped Jean felt just an ounce of the pain he had, and wonders if it had somehow worked, if willing Jean to miss them meant he truly did.

But there’s another factor in the equation now. It isn’t so simple.

“If you hadn’t left us you wouldn’t have Mina. Still want to call it a mistake?”

Jean looks like he’d been expecting this response, almost unfazed. “You can regret certain things and not their outcomes,” he says, dipping his head towards Eren’s, close enough that Jean could kiss him, if he wanted. Eren’s heart thumps. “I still regret it,” Jean adds quietly.

“I don’t need you to prove to me that you’re sorry, okay,” Eren says sternly, which is a lie. It’s a selfish relief to hear.

Jean’s face crumples in on itself— his nostrils flare up and his chin crinkles, and Eren realizes with something like mild horror that he’s going to start crying. For a dangerous moment in time he nearly laughs, and then something within him shifts, and he presses past that last inch of distance to kiss Jean, chaste on the lips.

“You know what I think?” Eren says, pulling just far enough away to speak, but staying close enough that his voice is barely above a whisper. “I think you freaked out because you couldn’t imagine two people being your number one.”

Jean still looks hopelessly close to crying, but Eren presses on.

“But that’s changed forever because Mina will always come before anyone else, and that’s how it should be.”

Jean makes a small, broken sound in the back of his throat. “Just because I didn’t know how to handle it didn’t change the fact that you both were—”

“You don’t need to do this,” Eren interrupts angrily. “Stop fucking backtracking. Right now, right here— you have a little girl and a shitty job and a mother that loves you.”

Jean looks torn in two. “That all I have?”

“Right now?” Eren says. “Yeah.”

Eren kisses Jean again, this time firmer, more assured. It’s mostly because Jean looks pathetically wounded, but more in that Eren wants to fix it, which is new. Jean kisses him back this time, clutching the side of Eren’s neck, squeezing. He exhales shakily against Eren’s lips, and Eren feels the warmth of Jean’s breath from head to toe.

“But things change, you know?” Eren murmurs, a flicker of that old familiar feeling, of not wanting Jean to slip through his grasp. “Don’t expect them to, don’t plan on them changing, but. They can, and they do.”

Jean keeps his hand on Eren’s neck, gazes into his eyes like he’s forgotten where they were, like it never mattered. He kneads the curve of Eren’s shoulder, traces the line of his throat with his thumb, and says, “I’m proud of you, you know?”

Eren winces, pulling away. “Jesus christ, Jean—”

But Jean holds him firm. For the first time— possibly ever— it’s _Jean_ refusing to let him leave.

“You proved everyone wrong, you got into a good school, you’re starting a real career.”

“What, you think I need affirmation from an ambiguous pool of fathers, Jean?” Eren snaps harshly, though Jean doesn’t look nearly as affected as he’d hoped. “You really think I need that?”

“No,” Jean says, and he looks so goddamn sure of himself it’s almost disorienting. “I just want you know that’s how I feel. About you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jean wakes to the sound of a vacuum cleaner going off in his en suite bathroom. It isn’t too alarmingly out of place, but when he jerks up at the sound he notices Mina isn’t by his side. He glances towards the clock— he nearly overslept for his shift. The hushed sound of a deep voice alongside Mina’s excited squeal tells him that Eren’s here already, but that doesn’t explain the impromptu cleaning session.

Groaning as his hip pops into place, Jean stumbles away from the bed headed toward the bathroom. When he gets there he’s jolted out of his sleepy stupor, because Eren is holding the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner up to his baby’s head.

“What are you doing!” He yells, loud enough to get Eren to turn the thing off.

“Her hair is always atrocious,” Eren grumbles, not even looking at Jean for more than a quick second, and then Jean realizes he’s watching something on his phone, swiping at his screen to bring whatever it is back up.

“You think a _vacuum_ is gonna fix that?” Jean practically shrieks.

“Worth a try.”

Mina cries out a giddy, “Daddy!” and Jean hugs her from behind in response, kissing her small, delicate little head. Eren has her sitting on the counter next to the sink, facing the mirrors with a lapful of different colored elastic bands— hair ties. Eren must have bought her a new pack, though she’s already upended them into a tangle. They’re the ‘ouchless’ kind, Jean notices, which sends an oddly timed spike of affection for Eren right through the center of his chest.

But no— _vacuum_.

“Seriously, what?” Jean leaves Mina to her colorful elastic mess and looms over Eren’s shoulder to see whatever the hell it is he’s found on his phone.

It’s a video. _‘Daddy does hair’_ , it says. A man holds up the nozzle of a vacuum to his daughter’s head, and then yanks it away two seconds later to reveal the perfectly formed ponytail.

“That’s some black magic,” Jean murmurs in awe. Eren moves to switch the vacuum on again, but before he can align the nozzle to her tiny skull Jean panics again. “No, don't!”

They tussle over the vacuum cleaner nozzle for a few minutes, all while Mina squeals in delight, watching them from her view in the mirror. Somewhere in between stepping on the overlong hem of Eren’s jeans to upend him and Eren elbowing Jean in the side in retaliation, Armin manages to walk in.

Armin delicately takes two matching purple elastics from Mina’s lap, and with a quick and complicated looking flourish of hands he’s got two perfectly formed little pigtails sitting snug against her head.

Both Jean and Eren gape at them.

“How did you do that?” Eren asks, and Jean grunts as he nearly trips over the cord of the vacuum cleaner, shoving it with his foot out of their way. This bathroom was crowded with just him and Mina, but now with all four of them…

“Years of experience,” Armin says, and then he tugs Mina up off the counter to take her back into the bedroom in the safety of his arms.

“You wore _pigtails_?” Eren shrieks after him, and Jean can… yeah, he can picture it.

Armin’s hair got excessively long in college, when cutting it felt like a luxury and not a necessity. Jean’s favorite were the loose buns he wore on top of his head when he was too frustrated with it getting in his face as he attempted to study. Imagining two of those— it isn’t hard. His hair is shorter now, but he always seemed to prefer it long.

Jean snaps out of his nostalgic reverie when Armin waspishly reminds him that he’s going to be late for work if he doesn’t hustle. Right. Work. Jean gives Mina a quick peck on the cheek, tugging gently on one of her pigtails when she blushes, turning her face into Armin’s shoulder where he currently has her held against his hip. Embarrassed by dad already, it seems.

.

Jean’s job is more than a little depressing, at times. People are packed into convertible cube dividers like sardines, and it feels sometimes like Jean could just stop showing up for his shift and only his direct supervisor would notice. He figures that might be typical of high volume call center work, but still— its nice to feel important sometimes.

Mina makes him feel important, even if in the same notion he can sometimes feel utterly useless. So he’s not great at doing his daughter’s hair— some fucker went so far as to attempt putting a vacuum to his baby girl’s skull, so he can’t be alone in that sentiment. Even if it did look kind of badass when executed properly.

Jean’s day goes by much like every other day: miserable and long. His mood only sinks as the hours tick by, but it isn’t a new feeling. It starts when he goes for a cup of coffee and sees no one’s restocked the paper cups, leaving him to stand there like an idiot and inhale the caffeinated fumes for the 4 minutes and 15 seconds left of his break instead. And even with that, he gets docked on break overages because this place doesn’t have assigned seating, and some asshole took his nameplate off the computer he was using.

It all culminates sometime after lunch, where Jean has to wait again to find another seat, and then is emailed by his supervisor that he needs to work extra hours sometime next week to makeup for all the time he’s been missing. When he first started getting these emails he panicked, thinking he was on the edge of losing his job, but eavesdropping his its merits— everyone gets the same emails, considering there is usually a line of people waiting for seats after every lunch rotation. It’s why they always manage to fill their shift quotas, Jean figures.

And it isn’t like Mina needs to have some kind of added importance to Jean— just her existence does that— but it still gives him an immense sense of purpose and relief. He has someone who needs him to suffer through this, someone who loves him unconditionally and smiles like the brightest of summer days every damn time she sees him.

But, with that, Jean’s day has been threaded with curious bouts of daydreaming. What if he could have more? He’s shit at doing Mina’s hair— so what? Armin could do it. If he ever did truly fuck up at work and lose his job, what if Eren could support them until Jean found his feet again? Eren works at a legitimate company downtown, he’s got his shit together more than Jean (or anyone) had ever expected him to. It’s a horrible and selfish thing to think, but Jean is lying to himself if he thinks he hasn’t wanted this all along— even when Eren was broke and Armin’s hair looked like someone had ran a weed whacker through it. Just having them there, along with Mina, would be enough.

There’s headway being made, at least. Eren seems less and less likely to bolt out the front door every time he so much as looks at Jean, and Armin sometimes smiles the way he used to, all teeth and that one, singular dimple, and none of it a shield to hide how he really feels. Sometimes Jean wonders if Armin took it harder, despite Eren being substantially more vocal about it. Who took him on walks in the middle of the night after the split? No one, Jean assumes, and he grips the steering wheel so tightly it makes his knuckles turn white. It isn’t fun to think about, so he stops.

Work was hell, Jean’s head is a mess, his mom has a pile of unpaid bills displayed in something like a thinly veiled guilt trip laid out on the kitchen table when he walks in, but every single thread of the tangled ball of anxiety that had lodged itself in his throat simply slips loose the minute he walks into his room.

They’re sleeping. All three of them, Eren and Armin both bracketed carefully around Mina’s splayed out form. They’re laid out in a heap of pillows and blankets, tangled amongst the wreckage of what looks to have been a killer fort. Jean would know— Armin used to make them out of Jean’s sofa cushions and towels whenever Jean would get dramatic about his classes and claim he didn’t want to see the world for a few days. Eren always rolled his eyes, but he helped when Armin proclaimed he was going to make Jean a new world, one he could hide in for a while.

Jean has never stopped loving them, he knows this already, but it hurts to sit there and think about. He’s crying, probably. He can’t really tell, but his vision is a little blurry and his throat feels tight and sore. His baby girl looks so comfortable between them, one tiny fist curled around Armin’s thumb, while her sock-clad foot is wedged like a prop against Eren’s thigh. Even on the goddamn floor, both Eren and Armin are hopeless with sharing a sleeping space. It always turns into a tangle, and Jean loved it that way.

Jean ends up downstairs after splashing some cool water on his face in the guest bathroom and counting through a few deep breaths. All of this is good. All of it, every damn thing that’s ever gone wrong in his life has led to this, and it’s good. So why does it feel like the sky is going to fall on him at any given moment?

He sits across the table from his mother, sheepishly sliding the pile of unpaid bills out from under her palm. She doesn’t put up much of a fight for it, and Jean doesn’t expect her to.

“You have a good day?” she asks him, and the hushed tone to her voice tells Jean she knows the boys are sleeping upstairs with Mina.

“Bout as good as any,” Jean mumbles, and then he stares down at his hands, picks away at the edge of one of the envelopes. He has amends to make, he knows. So many, but he has to start somewhere. “Ma, I need to tell you something. Eren and Armin. In college, we—” Jean’s throat constricts over the words, and he clears his throat. “We were together. The three of us.”

He glances up to his mother, his eyes set steady, and he wills her to understand what exactly he means. She looks calm, if anything. Expecting, almost. Jean isn’t sure what that means, until he hears the next set of words that leave her mouth.

“Do you love them?” she asks patiently.

Jean’s throat goes tight again in an instant, his eyes burning against the first glistening sheen of unshed tears. “Yes,” he chokes in response, with some effort.

His mother leans forward, covers his hand with hers over the top of the mail. “Baby, why are you all upset?”

Jean shrugs, snuffling. He purposely doesn’t push her hand away. “I don’t know, Ma, I don’t want to disappoint you. I fucked it all up before, and I don’t— how can I possibly love both of them when I can barely handle loving my own daughter?”

She soothingly runs her thumb over his knuckles, the same way Jean does with Mina. “Do they love you as much as you love them?” she asks him point blank.

Jean nods shakily, staring down at their hands. “Yeah, I think so.”

“And do they love Mina?”

“God, yes,” Jean says, wincing at the volume of his voice lest he wake them now, of all fucking times. His voice sounds like it’s been battered by a frozen hammer. He lowers his voice, says, “They love her so much, Ma, I had no idea. Even Eren, Eren gets freaked out by kids, always said it was the one thing he never wanted out of life, but he’s so good with her. And she loves them both, already, she really does.”

His mother leans back in her seat, lets her hand slip away from Jean’s. She smiles. It’s fond, but about as equally exasperated as he knows she can be with him sometimes.

“Then I think you just answered your own question.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Things are getting better. Armin’s grandfather stops forgetting who he is real late at night, even vaguely begins to remember Eren’s name, asking about him once or twice. Spring moves into summer, and Armin toils over the thought of picking classes– if it would even be worth it, in the long run, to get back into school at this point in his life.

He still hasn’t told anyone. Eren assumes he studies at home, takes his classes online, while Jean doesn’t ever seem to have a big enough space freed up in his mind to think about it.

He will tell them. If it comes to that.

Jean seems more on edge than usual. When Eren and Armin are getting ready to leave on this particular night, Armin scrunching up his nose at the cute way Mina says the ‘R’ in Eren’s name like a 'W’, Jean paces in front of the doorway leading down the stairs. His entire body is tense, and it shows in the way he chews on a thumbnail, fusses with his hair. Even the muscles in his shoulders seem tight, like he’s ready to stretch out his arms to stop them from leaving at any moment.

“You guys got plans?” he finally asks them, which is good because Eren looks about two breaths away from telling him to sit the fuck down and count backwards from ten.

“No,” Armin says, shaking his head, head turning to send Eren a hopeful glance. “Eren?”

“Was gonna stay with you,” Eren mumbles, shrugging.

“Okay, hang on.” Jean swoops Mina into his arms, and then bolts down the stairs at a speed that makes Armin more than a little nervous. Mina cackles through it, her head bobbing as Jean thumps down every leaped step.

Eren takes a somewhat hesitant seat on the edge of Jean’s bed, bouncing one knee. It’s only a few seconds of charged silence, and then Jean is bounding back up to the room, sitting in the plush chair near Mina’s toy chest.

“Can we do something together? Just us.”

Eren glares at Jean, and Armin’s gaze flits between the two of them. Jean looks like he’s stuck between the tipping point of laughing and crying, clenching his hands into fists so they don’t shake. Eren looks absolutely bewildered, which Armin bites down a smile at. Eren always seemed so surprised by Jean, while Armin could always see this kinda thing coming from a mile off. Truthfully, he hadn’t expected Jean to admit it to himself so quickly — never mind to the both of them.

“Like what?” Armin asks, because Eren seems too stunned to speak.

“Like a date,” Jean says, his voice betraying him only slightly in the way it trembles. Eren’s face goes slack, less tension and more disbelief. Armin’s heart soars in something like hope.

“A date,” Eren clarifies numbly, “Like, the three of us?”

Jean nods, glancing quickly to Armin, his eyes somewhat lost.

“Thought you didn’t do that shit,” Eren says lowly.

Jean shakes his head, his expression hurt but still firm in his intent. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said that.”

“It was implied,” Eren says, slow and deliberate.

“I think we should,” Armin chimes in. He crawls over the mess of blankets still on the floor from earlier, kneels next to Eren’s feet on the ground. He places a hand on Eren’s knee, squeezing. “We never got to do it before, why not now?” he asks Eren, quiet enough that Jean can still hear, but that Eren knows the question is directed at him.

Eren sighs, the tightness to his shoulders loosening. Good, that’s a good sign. “Where would we even go?”

Jean runs a hand down his face, looking an odd mix of confused and elated. “Anywhere, I don’t — wherever.”

“What, like, a movie? Dinner? I don’t know what the fuck you constitute as a date,” Eren grumbles, and then he turns on Armin, “Or you, because I’m pretty sure we _have_ done this before.”

Armin shrugs, “I just meant as adults. I didn’t think spending time together on campus counted.”

“Let’s just go for a drive,” Jean offers. “Yeah. Like, why do we need to do something, let’s just go? It’ll be like walking around the quad but unhindered by spatial restrictions.”

“Tell me you did not get high before coming home,” Eren deadpans.

“No, I just get weirdly nostalgic about how we used to be,” Jean admits, quiet but honest. He turns his gaze towards Armin and says, “And I disagree too. We went on tons of dates. The international festival, where that big Russian lady tried to steal you from us? Denny’s, like, every fucking night? It all counts.”

“Right,” Armin says, because he has a point.

“And what about after the drive,” Eren asks. “What then?”

The atmosphere in the room shifts, the buzz of nerves settling in something quieter, a delicate hum of anticipation this time.

Jean looks at Eren, and then to Armin. “We’ll figure it out.”

.

They take a drive up into the mountains, where Armin used to worry that the houses would slip down the slopes whenever it would rain. Jean revs his battered old car up the winding roads, and it isn’t until they’re halfway there that Armin realizes where they’re headed.

'Top of the Wall’ they used to call it call it. More officially known as Summit Park.

It’s where kids used to come to hide from all the encroaching adults back before technology was advanced enough to be a substitute escape. Eren had his first kiss here. Armin isn’t sure if Jean knows that, until he turns and catches Eren wince, calling Jean a _“sappy motherfucker”_ and then subsequently the way Jean grins, squeezing the back of Eren’s neck. He must have mentioned it— Armin wasn’t really paying attention.

Armin tries not to let his mind wander, to hope at what this could mean, or what it might end up leading to. It’s a dreamy sort of night, one where the sky is tinted purple and a light fog makes it seem distantly surreal. Mina’s chair is still strapped into Jean’s back seat, and Armin grips the edge of it tight enough to make marks on his palm, to keep him grounded in reality. Jean’s mother had offered to watch Mina for the night while they went out. Does this mean she knows? Had Jean told her?

If nothing else, there’s a lot of talking that needs to happen. Maybe coming up somewhere quiet and dark isn’t such a bad idea. Maybe this is just the kind of reconnect mechanism they need out of a date.

They spill out onto the dangerous slope of grass that teeters out over the edge where the gravel ends. Jean chose not to leave the headlights on, so each of their faces seem all that much more out of focus. It reminds Armin of the old films his grandfather watches alone at night.

“If you could go back in time to any year, which year would you pick?” Jean asks, laying out comfortably on the cool grass on his back.

“That’s a stupid fucking question, you know we’re all going to pick the same one,” Eren grumbles. He sits next to Jean with about half a foot of distance, his knees pulled to his chest.

“Actually, I was thinking more a year we weren’t alive in,” Armin chimes in, and he chooses to follow Jean’s lead, laying on Jean’s other side, facing up toward the stars. “The 1920’s always seemed kind of dangerous and romantic to me.”

“Really?” Eren asks, sounding a little hurt. Armin glances in his direction and sees how he’s frowning over at him. “You would choose something you didn’t know over this?”

Armin shrugs, focusing back up to the sky. At least 'this’ still means something to Eren, Armin knows. Not like he hadn’t already known, but still— it’s nice to hear it come from him directly.

“It’s for fun, Eren,” he says.

Jean makes a show of stretching out his arms, with an obviously unsubtle yawn, as he does his very best to herd them both closer to him. Armin snorts to himself, but he obliges Jean, scooting closer until his head is resting on Jean’s bicep. Eren doesn’t move, but he lets Jean keep a hand pressed to his lower back, fingers hooking on the belt loop of his jeans.

Jean loses his patience only a few moments of peaceful silence later, which is to be expected.

Jean says, “Eren, move closer.”

“I’m fine right here.”

Jean leans up a little, jostling Armin from his shoulder. He tugs on Eren’s belt loop this time, and says, “Fuck you, come here.”

Eren sighs like it’s a monumental struggle, but he shuffles his butt closer towards Jean, and then grunts when Jean manages to tug him down so he’s on his back too, the three of them now gazing up at the stars, all parallel lines in sync. It feels familiar, old and safe.

Eren must feel it too, because he suddenly cuts through the silence with a quick remark of, “There is a distinct lack of Jean’s pig laughter and a dimebag in this little scene we’re acting out.”

“Can you sit for like two seconds without getting defensive over your own goddamn silence? Jesus, dude,” Jean chides him, as he tugs Eren’s head to rest on his bicep the way Armin’s is.

“Hey, look,” Armin says, pointing upward towards the sky. “You can see Cygnus if you squint a little.”

Eren lifts his head from Jean’s arm, eyes visibly narrowed as he tries his best to see. He flops back down with a huff and says, “I don’t see shit.”

Armin turns his head, catches Jean pouting. “I think I might need glasses soon,” Jean mutters sadly.

“It’s the shape of a cross, there,” Armin says, pointing again at the soft twinkling mark in the sky. “Some call it the swan, but I prefer the cross. It’s easier to see when you picture a simpler shape, make it less complicated.”

Jean turns his head to the side, a hopelessly fond smile pulling at his lips as he gazes at Armin as though he’s the one made of stars. He says, “You would read lines in the dirt if you thought you could make stories out of them.”

“Yeah, how’s your novel?” Eren asks suddenly, and all the warmth flooding Armin’s chest from Jean’s quietly affectionate tone freezes and shatters.

Armin swallows, steels himself. If they’re going to do this again they need to be honest with each other.

“It… isn’t,” he says slowly.

Neither of them speak, both waiting for an explanation. Eren looks the most confused, a quick glance tells Armin, while Jean just looks curious.

“I dropped out of my classes,” Armin elaborates with a heavy, shaking sigh. “I’m not going to finish getting my degree anytime soon.”

“What, why?” Eren asks.

Armin shrugs a little, calming somewhat when Jean’s arm curls around his shoulders, pulling him close. “It isn’t for me. I don’t think I can make something I’m proud of enough to endorse, I’d rather keep it private.”

Eren sounds hurt, again. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“I felt lost, so I came home. I didn’t want anyone to worry, it’s not a big deal.”

“Big enough for you to keep it a secret?” Eren asks sharply.

Before Armin can even think about pulling up a defense, Jean chimes in with a quiet yet supportive, “You’ll figure something out. You always do.”

“What else haven’t you told us?” Eren asks, and this time he doesn’t sound hurt, it’s more like he’s beginning to realize what this is. A chance to do it all right, to start fresh.

Armin pulls his shoulders up to cover the chill of his neck, stiffening, preparing. “I’m still in love with you both, I guess? I never stopped.”

Jean exhales quietly. “Armin…”

“I’ve been fucking two other men,” Eren says abruptly, and the speed with which Jean’s head whips to glare at him would be funny out of context. “And not in… a good way. They don’t know about each other.”

Armin leans up over Jean, rests his chin on Jean’s chest. “Are you still?” he asks.

“I can’t anymore,” Eren mumbles, sounding more relieved than morose. He gestures to them— to Jean’s silently bewildered frown and Armin’s quiet acceptance. “This fucked me up, I think.”

Jean takes a few deep breaths. Armin smiles at Eren, a small little thing that he hopes conveys something like 'it’s okay’ and ‘I’m sorry’.

“I didn’t know Mina’s mother’s name until after she told me she was pregnant,” Jean says, his voice thick with raw emotion. “I wanted her to get rid of… Jesus, I can’t even say it,” Jean rubs at his eyes with his fist, pulling his arms away from the two of them. Armin connects his gaze with Eren’s as Eren lays back down, pressing the side of his face into Jean’s shoulder. Jean continues, “But she wouldn’t, said adoption was better. She was so distant about all of it, it scared the shit out of me. And then I saw Minnie, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let her go, I held her and knew she was mine, and that was it.”

Eren strokes down the length of Jean’s chest, an attempt at coddling the blow of what he says next. “You know she could come back and take her if she wanted? Tell me you know that’s at least possible.”

“Possible, yeah,” Jean says, finally letting his hands drop from his face, letting an arm wrap tight around Eren’s back. “But not likely.”

Eren looks up to him, his face set firm. “If we’re gonna do this again I need to know that’s not gonna happen. I need to know this isn’t going to fall apart somehow outside of my control.”

Armin gasps quietly, because that’s it. This is happening. “Eren…”

“Do _what_ , exactly?” Jean asks hesitantly.

Eren frowns deeper. “You know what.”

Jean lifts a teasing brow, stares Eren down. “You wanna be a family now? Three men and a baby?”

Eren makes a mildly disgusted face that Armin has to choke down the urge to laugh at. “If you’re going to make douchey jokes at least wait until we’re not trying to have a serious conversa–”

“I’m teasing you, Eren, chill out,” Jean interrupts, running his fingers down Eren’s side, his arm.

“You know me and Armin fucked after you left, right?” Eren announces with no warning, and it feels like Armin’s tripped, slipping out of control.

Armin tries to interrupt. “Eren, please—”

“No,” Eren says to him, and then he rounds back on Jean. “Because that was your biggest fear, wasn’t it? That we could be together without you? Like it was some kind of fated fucking path, like you strolled in and tore a hole in our destiny or some shit.”

Jean sneers a little, despite the weakened state of his voice. “You gonna give me the dirty details too? Rub it in a little more?”

“You want me to?” Eren asks harshly. “You want me to tell you about what it feels like to want to cry just after you come? Because it is not a nice fucking feeling—”

“ _Stop_ it, jesus,” Armin interrupts, smacking a decisive hand down onto Jean’s chest like a gavel dropping. “I just wanted to come clean about the fact that I feel like the world’s biggest failure, and you’re both turning this into a pissing contest.” Armin rounds on Jean first, says, “Jean, you have a wonderful child in your life, so I don’t think you should regret any of your decisions thus far, but just know that you helped nobody’s relationship by leaving us. And Eren,” he turns to glare at Eren, who is already cowering back a little bit, “You clearly do not want to be in a relationship with two different people that don’t know about each other, so it’s good that you ended it, before it comes back to bite you in the ass.”

Jean pokes Armin gently in the side and says, “And you?”

“And I…” Armin starts, and then swallows. Saying this out in the fresh air feels oddly comforting, in a way. Symbolic, maybe, if he were still caught up in the astrological pull of nostalgia. “I need to stop pretending I’m doing okay when I’m not. Me telling you guys, it’s— I’m trying to do that now.”

Jean leans back again, the tension in him visibly loosening as he looks back up at the sky. “Well, this isn’t exactly Denny’s after a night of no sleep and too much sex, but it’s something.”

“I left them both,” Eren blurts, and he looks pointedly at Jean. “When I heard you were back in town. I didn’t know where you went, I thought you’d have moved somewhere exotic and forgotten all about this place, but of course you hadn’t.”

Jean flicks his eyes down to Eren. “What are you trying to say?”

Eren shrugs defensively. “I haven’t been fucked in quite some time, so I thought it was just my dick taking over, but it isn’t. If this is just a one off or a taster or some shit I will hate you for the rest of my life.”

Jean huffs out something like a laugh, his expression hardening, and then he seems to make some kind of important internal decision as he reaches for Eren, grabbing and pulling at his jaw so he can kiss him. Armin presses the side of his face into Jean’s chest, tilted upwards to watch. It sounds nice, if nothing else. Eren panting into Jean’s mouth, the wet clacks their lips make, the tiny little whines building in the back of Eren’s throat.

Eren moves suddenly to straddle Jean’s hips, and Armin tries his best to scoot out of the way, but Jean doesn’t let him, he hooks Armin’s neck in the crux of his elbow, pulling him in. It feels like stargazing, oddly enough. Like looking for sparkling treasures, tiny moments scattered and hidden within the bigger picture. Eren starts to roll his hips down, fingers clutching at Jean’s chest, bunching up his tshirt in his fists, and Armin gets to see all of it. The constellations of peach and pink flushing Eren’s cheeks, the shimmering glint of Jean’s teeth as he tugs on Eren’s lower lip. All he can smell is Jean’s deodorant and the grass around them, but the sounds are just as nice as the sights. That is, until the rustling of clothes and heavy breathing is interrupted by the rumble of a car engine approaching in the distance.

“Hey, we shouldn’t do this here,” Armin says, tugging on Eren’s arm to dislodge them, biting down a laugh at the dopey confused look on Jean’s face, clearly mourning the loss of Eren’s mouth. “We’re not a bunch of drunk teenagers.”

“What?” Eren says, glancing around like he’d just woken up. “What do you suggest then?”

Armin shrugs after sitting up, stretching out the ache in his shoulder. “I don’t know, let’s get a cheap motel or something? Somewhere indoors, maybe, with a bed?”

Jean laughs, sharp and loud. “A cheap motel? I thought you said we _weren’t_ a bunch of drunk teenagers.”

Armin smacks Jean playfully on the arm, and then dips down quickly to kiss him, shivering at the way his mouth is still wet and a little warm from Eren’s tongue. “I want the real deal,” he says quietly, with a pointedly arched eyebrow.

Jean murmurs, “High maintenance as always, I see.”

Armin pulls away with a grin that feels far too big for his own face, and it only threatens to pull wider when he sees Eren already has his phone out to search for hotels nearby.

“Found one,” Eren announces as they all pile back into Jean’s car. Armin’s heart begins to pound, heavy thudding beats, all the years of longing pent up inside this shitty, beat up little car. He’s got grass stains on his arms, he notices shakily. He should shower. At the _motel_. Armin giddily resists the urge to do a little dance in his seat.

Eren quietly adds a swift, “Armin is not allowed to read the reviews, and I’ve already booked it, let’s go,” and then Jean is pulling away from the lot, the gravel crunching like sparks beneath the skid of the tires.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The hotel room they get is seedy and dated, all dark colored drapes and linens with peeling paint on the wood trim, but Eren would be lying if he said he wasn’t used to this by now. It feels almost familiar, in a sense, and that makes it all the more intimidating. This isn’t just a date— it doesn’t feel like it, anyways.

Armin skips off towards the bathroom and immediately starts running the shower with the door open. Neither him nor Jean ask him why, or what he’s doing. Maybe he just needs a moment to breathe alone, Eren isn’t sure.

Eren kicks off his shoes and then scoots up towards the back of the bed. They’d splurged on a king sized bed, though calling 70 bucks a night a spurge feels like a stretch. Still, he pulls his knees towards his chest and flicks on the television. Jean wanders aimlessly around the room, picking things up like he’s even remotely interested in the decor, while Eren settles on one of the high cable channels showing reruns of _'Cheaters’_. He barely swallows the urge to laugh at his own irony.

Jean seems like he’s waiting for something, and when he clearly doesn’t get what he’s after, he flops down onto the bed next to Eren. Armin is still in the shower, the static hiss of the water pelting the cheap tile almost drowning out the tinny sounding television. Eren doesn’t bother turning the volume up. You usually don’t need it for this kind of thing.

“You still have the worst taste in television, I see,” Jean says, his voice warm and close, sliding close enough to Eren that he can rest the point of his chin against Eren’s shoulder.

Eren smiles, despite his efforts to keep calm and neutral. He’s never seen Jean so blatantly full of want, practically vibrating in some kind of boyish anticipation.

“Fuck off,” he murmurs lightly, and he shivers when Jean laughs low into his ear.

“C'mere.”

Jean shuffles until he’s behind Eren, and then tugs Eren into his chest so that he’s sitting snug in the 'v’ shape Jean’s legs part to make. He wraps his arms easily around Eren’s middle, buries his face more fully into Eren’s neck, resting his cheekbone on his shoulder.

Eren doesn’t realize it at first, but Jean is rocking him back and forth, swaying to some silent rhythm in his head. It’s making Eren sleepy, and he’s about to chide Jean and bite that he isn’t his cranky child, but then Jean sort of startles all of the bite right out of Eren completely with what he says.

“I missed you so much,” he mumbles, right against the skin of Eren’s neck, voice a warm puff of air.

Jean clings to Eren like he’s worried he still wants to pull away, and part of Eren is aware enough to feel the sharp twinge of guilt that manifests in his gut because of it. He’s been cold, yes, but it was his only defense. And he’s felt so alone for so long.

“I don’t know how you even had time to think about us,” Eren says, the thickness to his voice betraying his attempts at staying neutral. “About me.”

Jean seems to have found his voice— here, in this shitty hotel room with fuzzy cable television and threadbare sheets— although it is a weak one.

“Sometimes I couldn’t think of anything else,” Jean murmurs pitifully, and he whimpers quietly when Eren rests his head against Jean’s, gives him some weight to show that he’s here, he doesn’t need to be missed anymore.

Jean begins to kiss Eren’s neck, his mouth wet and soft, yet still firm in his determination to keep touching him. Eren moves to grip the back of Jean’s hand still clutching him around the waist, squeezing at his wrist, holding him there.

“We should talk about this,” Eren gasps out, his eyes fluttering shut— because slipping back into a nameless definition of affection is not where he needs to be, not after everything he’s been through to get to this point.

“Okay,” Jean says, and he kisses him again, slower, pressing his tongue against Eren’s pulse. “We will.”

Armin reemerges into the room with nothing but a white, scratchy looking towel held around his hips, and the both of them stop whatever it was that was beginning between them. Eren hadn’t even heard the shower turn off, only barely notices the fact that Armin is pulling the tv remote out of his hands and turning that off as well, and then he’s kneeling before them both on the bed.

Jean shifts, ready to move away, his arm already loosening around Eren’s waist, but Armin is quick to stop it. He pulls Jean’s hand back, presses it with a pointed yet gentle insistence against Eren’s belly.

“Don’t,” is all Armin says, and he looks at the two of them like he… well, like he loves them. Like he missed them. Like an artist finding a muse, or perhaps the sun setting over the cusp of the ocean. Armin looks at them like he never wants to look at anything else.

Jean starts to kiss Eren again, this time starting from his cheeks and trailing downward, nudging Eren’s jaw until he’s kissing the side of his throat. Eren watches Armin, sees the distinct fattening of his pupils and thinks _the only things that matter to me are here, in this room_.

But then that wouldn’t be correct either. _Mina_ , he thinks, and then pushes the thought away. Now is not the time to worry.

Instead Eren’s gaze trails lower, to the loose slung of the towel around Armin’s hips, and he reaches forward to tug it the rest of the way, exposing all of Armin’s pale skin to the shoddy blueish glow of the room from the street lamps filtering through thick and worn curtains.

Eren can feel the way Jean’s breathing increases in speed, which means he’s watching. Armin sits back on his heels a little, parting his knees, squeezing his dick as it thickens under both of their gazes.

Jean’s hand skitters lower from Eren’s belly and with shaky but determined precision he’s pulling Eren’s cock out of his jeans, moaning into Eren’s neck as he touches him in what feels like the first time in decades.

Armin leans forward, tugging Eren’s pants and boxers until Eren catches the hint and lifts his hips. And then he’s sitting there, tilting his hips upward, in nothing but a tshirt and a hoodie, while Armin surges forward to kiss him with a quiet, needy little sound.

It’s… it’s overwhelming. Armin kisses down Eren’s jaw, towards one side, pausing to suck Jean’s lower lip into his mouth, and then lower still. Jean’s shaky hands shove Eren’s tshirt up until it bunches around the width of his chest, and then Armin’s mouth is on his belly, pink tongue tracing the line of hair lower, and lower.

Armin takes Eren into the wet heat of his mouth, and Eren already feels too close, too pent up. If it continues like this it’ll all end before it even gets to fucking start, and this feels too much like it’s about getting him on board with this. He wouldn’t have even gotten in Jean’s car if he didn’t know— didn’t _hope_ — that this might end up happening.

Eren turns his head, presses his nose alongside Jean’s, groaning quietly as Armin pulls off a little to focus suction around the head of his cock. He pants against Jean’s mouth— Jean, who holds Eren’s face and looks into his eyes with the most giving, honest looking smile— and says, “Wanna fuck you.”

Jean ends up standing on shaky legs to divest himself of his clothing, at which time Armin sprints in then out of the bathroom with some condoms and two small sachets of lube, and Eren isn’t really thinking about how this is going to work— not now, not when it’s so easy to fall back into the physical aspect of their relationship (he’ll tell himself they can work out the kinks later, that it won’t amount to just this, and he tries his best to make himself believe it).

Armin helps ease Jean down into Eren’s lap after what feels like a blur of skin and spit and sweat, Jean’s handprint seemingly burned against the side of Eren’s neck with the force he’d gripped while Armin’s fingers pushed into him from behind.

Eren has to hold himself back, almost loses control when he can feel Armin’s slick fingers slide up along his dick into Jean, pushing until Jean begins to whine and twist in his hold.

Eren becomes somewhat overcome by a hot surge of arousal, wanting all he can fucking have in the limited span of reality this moment will give him. He pushes Jean off of him, and then turns him around so his ass is up in the air, his face pressed into the cheap and tacky duvet coverlet on the bed. He grabs Armin by his hair, kisses him as he fumbles with the second condom and then slides it onto him. Armin fucks his first for a few seconds, snickering quietly between them when Jean whines with a few rolling humps against the bedspread and a breathy sounding, “ _unh_ , one of you, _fuck_ , please.”

Armin crawls over to Jean, kisses up the length of his spine, follows the curve of his shoulder. He pushes into Jean with a heavy sounding moan, and then Jean’s voice reaches a fever pitch. He always seemed to like it better laying down on his front.

Eren scoots up behind Armin, his hand coated in slippery lube, and he plays with Armin’s ass in teasing little pushes and prods, only slides the very tips of a few alternating fingers on the fallback of each of his thrusts. He eventually gives Armin what he knows he wants once he’s pressing his face into Jean’s back, mouth lax and open, waiting for more.

Eren fucks Armin with his fingers, leaning back to watch as he divests himself of the condom to jerk himself off. Jean starts rolling his hips back and up, pushing and trying his best to pull, and before Eren can really comprehend where anyone’s at— whose voice is whose, which warm, wet patch of skin belongs to who— he spills himself all over Armin’s back, gripping him and then falling in a panting, liquid heap to the side.

He laughs, because it feels so fucking good. With the loss of Eren’s fingers Armin seems to pick up speed, and Jean’s fingers are practically tearing holes in the sheets now, the slap of Armin’s bony hips against Jean’s skin echoing around the room. Eren watches them caught in the net of a nostalgic post-coital haze, and he runs his fingers through Jean’s hair when he can tell he’s close, scratches at his scalp.

Armin comes inside of Jean, his ass clenching and bearing all of his weight down ontop of him, and then Jean turns his head with a heavy grunt, turns his half-lidded gaze onto Eren. He’s got creases on his face from being pressed so long into the sheets, and his eyes look kind of red and wild, but in the best sort of way. He sends Eren a lazy, hopeful (beautiful) grin and Eren thinks maybe he has the courage, this time, to tell them what he really wants.

And that no, the only important people in Eren’s life are not the two in this room. There is still, always going to be something else.

.

Eren rolls over with a tired groan expecting to get a face full of hair or skin, but he’s met with the cool press of unused pillow. His head jerks up in mild panic, but then his heart calms when he sees that they’re still here, just a little farther away than he’s used to. In fact, Armin is even awake.

“This bed is fucking massive,” Eren grumbles, rubbing at his eyes as he sits up, the sheets tangling around his hips in the process.

Armin laughs quietly. “There’s practically an ocean between us now, it’s weird. I always wanted a king sized bed in college, but now I’m not so sure.”

Jean mumbles his way into a bewildered state of awake, and then leans up on his elbows with only one eye open, peering around the room like he’s looking for something he lost. It tugs at Eren’s heart, realizing he probably hasn’t woken up without Mina in quite a long time.

“How is there so much space on this thing?” Jean immediately comments, and Armin giggles again, this time louder.

“We’ve decided to try out a long distance relationship,” Armin says teasingly, leaning over toward Jean to kiss him warm on the cheek. Armin is already dressed, while both Eren and Jean are very much not.

“Are we in a relationship?” Jean asks quietly. His tone is cautious and hopeful, all at once, and Eren trails a hand down Jean’s arm, stroking it with the tips of his fingers the way his mother used to do when he was clearly distressed.

“I want to be,” Armin replies, and then they both look to Eren.

It isn’t a difficult decision. He’d already made it before even agreeing to go out with the two of them last night, but it’s slightly irritating having to say it out loud, like they should know already. He doesn’t — say it out loud — instead he nods silently.

“I do too,” Jean says, and he stops Eren’s tickling caress so he can hold his hand tightly. “And I want you to be… I want you to continue to be a part of my daughter’s life too, if that’s okay.”

Armin grins, shifting to push Jean’s hair away from his sleepy half-closed eyes and pausing to beam down at him.

“Of course,” he says, and Eren kisses the inside of Jean’s wrist before standing to get dressed.

.

They check out of the hotel and then head back towards Jean’s place, and the ride in the car is mostly silent yet still comfortable. Armin rolls the window down and lets the cool, calmly grey day whip past his hair. He was always this kind of passenger — looking out of windows and smiling at things.

Eren opted for the back seat so he could lay down, which was quickly thwarted by the fact that Mina’s car seat is still strapped in the middle. He would have unbuckled it and shoved it to the floor so he could catch another few minutes of sleep, but putting it back in place seems like a dauntingly confusing task. He should learn how to do it, though. It seems… necessary.

Jean heads immediately up the stairs once he opens the door, and Eren tries not to laugh at the way Armin spots Jean’s mother sitting and drinking her coffee, waving in quiet greeting. Armin has always been funny about her, and coming in the morning after a night in a hotel together probably feels to Armin like something she can see on their faces. Eren thinks about it too — how much she must know by now, whether or not she cares — but it’s always been Jean that mattered more. Armin has too much internalized pride, like god forbid someone knows he’s ever been indecent.

Jean stops along the way to the stairs as his mother shouts, “She’s down here!”, and then sweeps in detour to the smaller living room off the the side, they one with the baby gate and the intentional lack of hard edges. Mina must see Jean first, because she absolutely shrieks the sound of an air raid siren and then comes fucking running for him at full speed.

Jean swoops her up into his arms with ease, grips her tightly to his chest. Eren isn’t sure if it’s being away from her in the mornings, or something like wanting to share his new-found glowing happiness with her. Whatever it is, it’s touching to see up close.

“I need to go,” Armin says, “I should check up on my grandfather.”

Jean nods. “Right.”

Armin leans over Jean’s shoulder to kiss Mina’s forehead, grinning at her when she squeals and presses a shy hand to her face afterwards in attempt to hide. Jean smiles warmly at her, and then reaches out to grab Armin before he leaves. He kisses Armin, soft and open — all while Mina rears backwards and looks moderately horrified, much to Eren’s amusement — and then mutters a quiet, “see you later” before he goes.

“Here, take her for a sec,” Jean says, handing Mina over to Eren once Armin has left the house.

Eren holds her as best he can on his boxy, slim hip. She’s a wriggler in the mornings, that’s for damn sure.

“Eren,” she babbles at him, grabbing at his cheeks. She still can’t quite pronounce her R’s just yet, but she’s getting there.

Eren presses his forehead to hers, stares at her with deep, exaggerated focus. “Yes?”

Mina giggle-shrieks again, hiding her face in Eren’s hoodie. Eren looks up and catches Jean stuck in the middle of tidying up her toys, staring at them together with a shaky but warm smile.

“I want to get us an apartment,” Eren blurts, because now is as good a time as any, even though he’d wanted Armin to be here too. Maybe it’s easier to drop this on Jean when he doesn’t feel the pressure of two sets of eyes on him (or three, depending on how you look at it).

“You don’t… have to–”

“I want to. Me, you, Armin, Mina, I want that,” Eren says, sending a quirked smile Mina’s way when she makes a giddy noise at the sound of her own name.

Jean gazes in open shock at Eren. “We don’t have to do this right away. I mean, god, I want it too, but if this is you trying to take some kind of responsibility—”

“It isn’t that. I know you want to be near your mom, and that’s. I think that’s a good thing. I’ll move here, I can still work in the city and commute.”

“What about Armin?” Jean asks, and his wide eyes give away the fact that he’s already imagining it, picturing the life they could have in his head.

“We’ll talk to him, but I wanted to ask you first.” _Or before I could panic and lose my nerve._

“It won’t be like living in a dorm or a hotel,” Jean says, approaching Eren and Mina slowly. He tugs at one of her messy pigtails playfully, stroking the curve of her cheek with the back of his finger. “I know she’s cute, but she can be a little devil when you’re not prepared.”

“Then we will be prepared,” Eren says firmly. “Which, by the way, you need to show me how to deal with her car seat, that thing is impossible.”

Jean laughs quietly, moving his hand instead to cup Eren’s jaw, stroking from chin to ear with his thumb. “That’s more Armin’s area. He’s better at puzzles.”

Eren scans Jean’s face, looking for any sign of hesitancy. There is none, only a fond, openly loving expression. Eren lowers his voice to a whisper and says, “I really think this can work.”

Jean nods quietly, leaning forward to kiss the corner of Eren’s mouth, exhaling through his nose when Eren shifts to slot their lips more firmly together. Mina makes a strange sound, and Eren pulls back laughing. She’ll have to get used to it, he reasons.

 

 

 


End file.
